


Of Gods and Monsters

by mussings_over_tea



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: (yep there's actual God but there's so much deus ex machina, (yes Rod Laver is an actual God and what about it lol), Breaking the Fourth Wall, Crack Treated Seriously, Deus Ex Machina, EMBARASSINGLY ROMANTIC AT TIMES (or all the time), Gen, M/M, Minor Violence, Supernatural Elements, Temporary Amnesia, about them exploring THIS FACT together a lot in multichapters LALA, alternative universe, and solutions pulled from nowhere HUSH), and yes i am on a mission to fill up the tag for these two with fics of my own creation, i'm a cancer don't hold it against me, lots of fluttery FLUFF literally and not so literally, only 5 people and a shoelace care for HA I SHALL, so they might be virgins here and there should be a sequel, some blashpemy, treat ya self be this person that writes 70 fics for an obscure pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21648574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mussings_over_tea/pseuds/mussings_over_tea
Summary: In the land of Gods and Monsters, Nicholas was not an employee of the month, for sure, looking to get f....saved hard.
Relationships: Alexander Zverev/Stefanos Tsitsipas (background), Nick Kyrgios/Rafael Nadal, Rafael Nadal/Nick Kyrgios
Comments: 10
Kudos: 11





	Of Gods and Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this glory: https://diegoalvesisgod.tumblr.com/tagged/legend-au with some things changed but you should really treat yourself with these visual goodies :-)
> 
> I'm sorry for making Nick somewhat of a virgin (he absolutely is, he didn't have time to change that) and also Rafael is very fluent and eloquent in English, because he can, ha!
> 
> There's lots of fourth wall breaking here. And a mess of a timeline too, with flashbacks written in italics, bear with me.

"Why the long face, Your Infernal Majesty?” Zverev mocks the title, as per usual, when he plops by Nicholas’ site in _Fallen Paradise_ (can they be more cliché) bar, where they always flock to lament over the miseries of their damned existence.

Nicholas nurses the fiery water, the glass in his hand literally set on fire, as the flames caress his skin in a pleasant way.

I mean, _yes_ , they _can be_ more cliché.

“Go away, disappoint some clumsy chick from Phoenix or Nevada or whatever over you not actually having a marble skin that sparkles, Zverev.”

Alexander licks the fresh blood from his fangs to that and his expression is pretty dazed, which tells Nicholas that this particular chick or dude or both, or who even cares, were not the fans of the Mormon mythology and went for the classic version instead, quite eagerly. Leaving him super high. And when Zverev was high on blood he was even more obnoxious than when he was being overdramatic while sober.

“Why are you wasting away here when there are people out there to corrupt?”

Nicholas gulps on the molten gold liquid to Zverev releasing a hiss and a shudder at way too uncomfortable proximity of fire. Because they are all really, very cliché. “So that you could come here like an annoying dumbass you are and ask me this question again and again and make me want to do body shots with you with holy water.”

“Sexy,” Zverev chuckles, showing his fangs, his eyes transparent blue, full of mischief but coldness, too. _Looks like a flower, stings like a bee_ , would be his modus operandi. Or this is the skin of a predator and everything about him is supposed to lure you in, and when he does, you actually discover what a dumbass he is, but hey, then it’s too late, because by that point, he’s already sucking onto your neck with ungraceful, greedy fervor or a fledgling that has no class whatsoever.

Unlike Nicholas, thank you very much. With his red tank tops, and his golden tie, black shorts covered in silver skulls, his bright orange converse with comets and a zip-up black hoodie with shining brightly on his chest: _Ask me if I give a motherfuck, bro?_

No. Unlike Nicholas with his hunching strut, fluffy curly mop of hair on the top of his head with that yellow streak sprinkled there (“I love your colour coded hair, Nicholas. I love that you make a stand like that,” Stefanos once nodded in stoic approval, glowing with his blinding fairy glory, the smell of flowers all over him, along with the sound of chirping birds and bells chiming, the symphony that somehow always followed him, as if playing straight from majestic forest of his locks Nicholas used to think elves are baking cookies in.)

“You don’t think I would do it?” Nicholas grunts, his voice hoarse, like sometimes he uses snarls instead of words and eyes flashing deep amber gold, snake-like, too.

“You like me too much,” Zverev shrugs, ordering a glass of A-negative, his favourite, as if he didn’t have enough of it straight from the source just few moments ago.

“You know this will give you high cholesterol, “ Nicholas nods at the glass, to Zverev choking on the content of it. 

“Thanks for killing the mood, mister health freak all of the sudden.”

“Stefanos told me,” Nicholas states matter-of-factly, counting inside his head gleefully.

_3-2-1._

“How is this relevant? What does it matter? Why do you bring him up? Like? Did he tell you, because I drink it often, like does he give a fuck about it, what for? Are you guys talking, anyway, when I’m not around? Why do you talk to him at all? Was he talking about me, though? What did he say? I don’t care, but I don’t understand, he doesn’t even go here, anyway, so, like what the fuck Nick?” Zverev is spilling the words in haste to Nicholas already cutting the noise out in his head. Zverev being a teenage drama show in motion has honestly gotten so old, so fast.

“Boooooooringggggg,” Nicholas elongates in a sing-song voice, twirling the fiery glass close to Zverev’s face to him mumbling while jerking away. _“Rude.”_

“Yeah, that’s my middle name.”

“I thought it’s an asshole.”

“You would know something about it, would you, dumbass.”

“If you guys are done comparing sizes, there’s work to do, people to bring onto the dark side, cookies to bake to represent,” Novak finishes his pool round with himself to some Serbian folk music sipping from a music box, making Alexander and Nicholas mouth to each other in unison. _“Criiiiiinge.”_

Novak’s wearing shades, even if it’s the middle of the night (remember, cliché!), and it’s dim and gloomy inside Fallen Paradise anyway, because that’s the obligatory scenery, that’s the aesthetic. (Guys in the background are sweating while working that fog machine.) He’s bare-chested, with only a snake scale vest hanging loosely from his body, his tight jeans and cowboy boots complete the image to Nicholas and Zverev, repeating their mouthing ritual. _“Criiiiiiiiiinge as fuuuuuck.”_

And then Nicholas asks out loud. “Uhm, because turning stuff to stone is a truly inspirational contribution to society, bro.”

To Novak slipping down his shades, to throw a meaningful gaze at Nicholas with his magnetic, green, golden eyes. “That’s how whole cities are built, kiddo.”

Nicholas stares back, unflinching, to Zverev shrieking instinctively, and stumbling all too limbs, too lanky behind the bar. “I’m a high order demon, dude, and some say I’m made of stone here anyway,” he touches his chest. “So your flashy magic doesn’t work on me. And you’re dead anyway, so stop being a wuss,” he then spits at Zverev, hiding behind the counter.

“You need a strong hand that will teach you,” Novak says putting the shades back on.

“Are you offering?” Nicholas teases lazily, but there is no conviction there and he’s looking at the counter of the bar with blank expression anyway. Completely not interested.

“It’s not me you want. Zdravo, gubitnici,” Novak salutes and heads for the door, leaving the two bickering.

“What did he mean?”

“Dude, you’re literally a vampire, yelping because of some Bon Jovi from Serbia. Don’t even talk to me”

“Oh yeah, because you’re a high order demon and like _bow down bitches_ ,” Alexander flaunts and mocks Nick. “You know, any man who must say I am the high order demon is no true high order demon at all,” he concludes in his whiney manner, Nick waits for him to actually show him his tongue or blow a raspberry. Classic Zverev.

“That’s not even how a quote goes and no one watches HBO anyway, so like, look alive.”

“Very funny.”

*

Nicholas hates mortal world. Whenever he needs to lurk out of their cave of sinister brooding, taking the form of various and yet very same and as cliché pubs full of woe and morbidity (honestly, how the hell they always find so much fog to pump into these places?) because, hey, even in the hierarchy of night creatures there’s awful lot of capitalism involved and he needs to do his duty and contribute apparently, (fuck that!), he’s even more grumpy than when he is back in the caves, nursing his fiery drinks of despair.

People are so cynical and shallow and like god forbid, pardon his French, you try to lure them onto sinful path of corruption they will look at you like you’re Tom Hanks asking about where’s the nearest phone booth as you need to make an urgent call to Seattle and also do they have any spare change to do that.

People are already super comfortable on their sinful paths of corruption, thank you very much, and they don’t need your assistance on the matter at all.

“How about getting high with 5 strangers, then having an orgy and waking up on the outskirts of the city in the middle of Europe not remembering how you got there with Russian mafia demanding money for their stolen car with a glock to your head?” Nicholas uses his hoarse, seductive voice™, that’s part of the arsenal of his infernal instruments of corruption, on an awkward, lanky student, shivering out of detox? Anxiety? Or least probably just cold on the bus stop. Nick bets he studies Russian literature, he looks exactly like Zverev’s buddy, before Zverev’s complete dumbaassery led him to a wrong crowd, looking for thrills and he ended up still a dumbass but also dead, pft.

The guy looks at him with mild interest and mostly contempt. “The fuck, man, that’s so 90s? My grandma knew how to top that. So lame,” and he pulls out the headphones to distance himself from any possible association with Nick, mumbling to himself the entire list of synonyms to lame and pathetic.

Fantastic. Just peachy.

That’s how it’s been working out for Nicholas for a while now. Zero prospects for a raise, absolutely no job satisfaction, and repetitively being called a loser in all languages of the word, so that’s maybe a bonus. In the meantime Novak hands people his _I’m CEO, bitch_ business card, taking over the companies and growing in status of Don Corleone, Mr Cringe Extreme. Even a trail of dead bodies he leaves behind doesn’t ruin his reputation. Where’s justice in that.

Nicholas slumps away from the guy in resignation. “And you should buy a clown wig, dude. It’s gonna suit you!” he has the audacity to throw after Nick. Nicholas doesn’t remember Russian literature students having their A-hole game that perfected.

Dumbasses, yes. Assholes, more like neurotic losers with overblown ambitions. But maybe Zverev was Zverev, unique on its own, an idiot extraordinaire.

Nicholas would have a different response for this guy back in the days.

He would flash his true form in all its terror and beauty, black wings glossed like made of black steel, outstretched impossibly wide, like covering the entire world with infinite starless sky, eyes like embers in the wildfire the very core of this force of nature swallowing whole lands in crimson fury, his features sharp and beastly, like carved in ancient black stone of Kaaba, his body large, imposing, god-like, towering with majesty and grace as flames would crawl on his skin like tongues of a biblical serpent, seductive but terrifying, and then the voice bellowing from the very core of the world with foreboding prophecy.

The fact is he rarely escaped to using his true form, because the voice™ (that purr of irresistible lust) would do its wonders and people were dancing on his strings like puppets in a street theater to a terrible, disco music.

Not anymore. For a while now, Nicholas has been a very inefficient high demon of seven deadly sins.

He doesn’t even bother spitting common, very not flashy and honestly, desperate and pathetic and utterly below his standards. _“Fuck you, too,”_ at that failure of a Russian literature student anyway. He doesn’t manage, because then he crashes with a fiery ball.

“Should they like not suppose to see you?” the fiery ball states matter-of-factly like a regular 40year old Dad to two pairs of twins, going on camping trips into the mountains, wearing fluffy vests and a three-day stubble and having an entire collection of Modern Talking Albums everyone knows about but pretends not to , so as not to expose him.

“No, shit, Sherlock,” Nicholas grunts back at Roger, who’s still on fire, like it’s a Friday barbecue night to celebrate the 4th of July and he’s wearing his costume to entertain the kids.

“Lost your mojo?” Roger continues to be annoyingly unmistakable, as the fire around him dies down, showing his perfect form underneath: literally walking Vogue front page in fancy black trench coats, casually unbuttoned in the area of the hollow of his neck maroon shirt (just to show the glimpses of the chest hair, you know, that TEASE™ effect, _you can look but you can’t touch_ ), jeans fitting and stylish shoes. The very opposite to cringe vibe Novak has.

“Ain’t you Captain Obvious today?” 

“Ain’t you all smiles and charm today?” Roger smiles and there’s a flash of compassion there that makes Nicholas’s fire shudder and try to burst out of his skin in rage, because he doesn’t need any pity from anyone ever. Not even Mister Perfection.

Roger now shimmers with remnants of phoenix fire, making him glow like impeccable statue of elegance and artistry and Nicholas is really tired of the unfairness of life in general.

Their fires differ a lot. Roger is engulfed in his, blazing star of indestructible power of the rebirth. Nicholas’s fire burns underneath, bursts in strands like a restless serpent, crawls seductively on his body like second skin, or like a whip or like a brush, too. An instrument for him to wield. Roger is fire, Nick commands the fire.

Which basically makes him, let’s be honest, cooler.

Pun not intended. Who writes this, anyway?

And yet, here they are. Nicholas slumped and resigned and Roger winning Mister Universum contest since the dawn of time.

“What do you do with this shit, anyway? Barbecue charity days for kids? “ Nicholas nods at the glow under Roger’s skin, like he’s radioactive.

Fuck that noise, that’s pretty cool, too.

“As a matter of fact, that is exactly what I do,” Roger nods, proud but also abashed. Which is his usual killer combo, making everyone within radius swoon collectively, like he doesn’t even need his divine fire to have that effect and, honestly, how can Nicholas not lament over the injustice of life.

“Of course, you do,” he chokes out, bitterly. Stupid and envious. A boy empty of purpose, his voice no longer heard by anyone.

Whoa. That was heavy.

“Oh, kiddo,” Roger touches his arm leaving pleasant sensation that for regular humans would be scorching, either warming up, cleansing or annihilating, depending on the soul. Nicholas wonders for a moment if he wasn’t a shadow creature, what would it do to him? What his soul was made of?

“You shouldn’t have left. You shouldn’t have run away,” Roger continues, in a low voice and a serious face.

“Left what?” Nicholas has absolutely no idea what he is talking about, with that disgusting compassion in his eyes and that gesture of reassurance suddenly making him heat up, and he’s not sure if there’s his answer to what his soul is made of and how it deserves damnation or if it’s his own fire acting like a shield protecting him from truths he doesn’t want to face.

“Nothing. Sucks you lost your mojo but remember: happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light,” Roger muses, then bursts into flames with all the indication of casually leaving, like he did his job here, stirred the plot enough and thrown in just the right amount of self-promotion to have people pining.

“The fuck I’m gonna do with a Harry Potter quote?” Nicholas hides his face in his hands, defeated, because in the very core, beneath that Vogue cover persona, Roger is not a fiery creature of rebirth but a goddamn nerd and he’s not even cringe-worthy about it.

“Ha, the fact you know it’s from Harry Potter makes you,” and Roger leans closer to elongate the word at him in a sing-song manner and a flamboyant LOSER sign. “expoooooooooooooooosed as a fellow Potterhoeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez.”

Nick stares, dumbfounded, as Roger swags away from that miserable street like he delivered a life lesson of poignant importance.

“What the fuck?” is all Nicholas is left with, asking the void as the void shrugs nonchalantly, excusing Roger from just being his usual self.

*

Demons don’t usually sleep. For all Nicholas knows shadow creatures don’t sleep in general. It’s a common misconception.

Sure. They don’t need to, physically. It’s not like they are overworked, get tired, need to get up at dawn to contribute to capitalism. ( _Excuse me, isn’t Novak the very definition of a capitalistic zealot, though?_ ). But hey everyone needs to push the reset button once in a while and pause this shit show to fast forward till morning when things still won’t get any better but at least you don’t have bags under your eyes and can pull off that looking fine while dying inside vibe more effectively, yep?

So, yes, Nicholas doesn’t sleep but he goes into a standby mode in his aesthetic loft he got for his persuasion powers (back in the days when they actually worked), all crimson black fortress of style and charisma. (with NBA posters, piles of vinyl hip hop albums, and play station right in the center of the living room with the most spectacular sound system and glamorous screen, but who said this isn’t a part of the aesthetic, not lame mortal world mimicry, pft?).

And he dreams. (Wow, that’s so lame, because that’s so human of him). Or maybe remembers. The images are vivid and intense, they repeat, or sometimes play differently, but they always feel the same: more like memories than visions.

_It’s white. It’s soft. It’s warm. And he thinks he’s looking at the sun. Golden, terrifying but beautiful. “I know you are staring and not listening to a word I’m saying. This is important. We need to pass these laws today and the Big Boss made us executives, so can you, please, focus for once in your lifetime, mi estrella.”_

_Nicholas shudders inside like he’s made of feathers and wings when he voices his frustration, even if the feeling inside is pliant and liquid. “Do I look like I fucking care about some rules, matahari saya?”_

_“Dios mio, por favor, why you’re being difficult, again. You have you’re a-level soon, they don’t just assign the title without this pile of paperwork done, you know that, estrella, so what am I supposed to do with you?”_

_The sun is blinding Nicholas but he’s basking in its warmth, all liquid placidity inside. Familiarity. Safety. He knows this. He remembers this. He used to have this._

_“Oh, I think I have quite a few ideas.”_

_“You are insufferable!”_

_“I think you meant irresistible, cinta.”_

_~ . ~_

_“You are natural, estrella. The kids adore you,” the sun is shining so bright Nicholas feels tears in his eyes. It hurts, but it hurts so good and he never wants it to stop._

_“That’s about the only good thing about this job, matahari. All that paper work, all them rules, jesus fucking christ, fuck this!”_

_The sun shudders in frustration and fear. “Estrella, I told you this whole place is bugged. There are many who got into detention and want to get back to His good graces. And they won’t be playing nicely.”_

_“Fuck capitalism, it got even here.”_

_“Estrella, please…”_

_“I don’t care about this. I only care about that cruise you promised me and we keep on postponing it because of this corporate shithole.”_

_“The kids were happy. So happy. You won life for them. Smiles and joy. Victory for the people. This is what you do,” the sun flares with pride and adoration and Nicholas melts and stays and thinks he doesn’t want to let go._

_~ . ~_

_“Do you think there’s destiny, matahari?” Nicholas asks, he feels soft and safe and at home. The sun shines bright around him._

_“Destiny is whatever He decides, estrella.”_

_“You have too much faith in Him, anyway.”_

_“That’s part of my job.”_

_“Are you a puppet on corpo strings, then? Is that it?”_

_“If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in a prayer,” the Sun recites in elevation._

_Nicholas swallows bitter defiance, remembering only blackness from before. And then remembering when the sun came. When the sun rose on his sky and he was found. And he thinks maybe it’s all real. The wishes, the prayers coming to life like that._

_“He put us together, so I guess you’re right,” he then adds out loud._

_The Sun hums. Nicholas flutters eagerly to it. Like made of feathers._

_“Why did he choose me at all?”_

_“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." With the words comes warmth overwhelming. Even if they are recited. The faith behind them is not._

_“Poster boy,” Nicholas mocks._

_The Sun replies then with own words. “This place was dark and empty, before. And then He found this lost estrella to put it on our night sky. A blessing. Hope. A new day.”_

_The warmth turns to heady heat and Nicholas becomes all feathers now._

He opens his eyes to the present day and it happens like it always does. Going into shut down mode does not make him feel any more recovered or ready to face another capitalistic battle with the shit world of mortals.

The ache inside him feels substantial and very real. How can emptiness have a shape, a weight and a presence?

*

Okay. He doesn’t always hate the job. He doesn’t always think this place is full of cynical, lazy, shallow meat suits running around in circles like consumerism crazed ants in the shopping mall on Black Friday.

Sometimes there’s a purpose. Sometimes there’s a reason.

A kid looks lost and scared, wearing his black hoodie (Nicholas has an entire wardrobe of, and thinks he can remember flashes of his life before when he was wrapped in one like a security blanket, the feeling only similar to one he has when he dreams, or remembers, of the Sun speaking to him when he’s made of feathers in response), hiding behind it, or clinging to it for courage.

He has a cap covering his face and he stands outside the gas station, setting off to enter the shop and then retreating instantly. His hand in the pocket of his jacket, clutching onto something.

Nicholas reaches for that other voice, _his_ voice, when he speaks from behind the kid, nonchalant, unaffected. “You don’t look like a junkie, I think you puked the booze you tried once in your life immediately after, so it’s about medicine, yep? Sickness in the family, yeah?”

The kid jerks and abruptly turns around with hostility poorly hiding fear on his face (Nicholas thinks he sees flashes of memories or dreams of his own like this). “Fuck off, I’m just chillin’ here.”

“Sure you do. You might wanna try to chill away from CCTV if you’re planning to do it, anyway,” Nick stands by the display window, pose the very definition of blasé, hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, the hoodie mirroring the one the kid is wearing, like he’s the ghost of Christmas here to deliver the message from the future.

Though this kid doesn’t probably draw the same conclusions. The kid doesn’t look like he knows what Christmas Carol is about. He doesn’t look like he knows what Christmas in general is about, either.

“And you? They can see you, too?” The boy throws his childish accusations, forgetting about denying his plans and playing dumb. Heart right up his sleeve.

“Don’t worry, little fella. I’ve got superpowers. They won’t see me,” Nicholas smirks to kid gaping in awe, before he composes himself into contemptuous.

“You’re pulling my leg. You’re a cop in disguise, yeah, and you’re trying to catch me?”

“Don’t insult me like that, all right? I’m gonna give you a show for free, but not until you’re telling me what is it?”

The kid looks like he’s struggling, between shame and fear and annoyance and all the shades of feelings that somehow taste so familiar to Nicholas like he used to wear them like second skin.

“Medicine for my mom’s cancer,” the kid mumbles, his whole posture torn between pumped for action and defeated, slumps into absolutely crushed now.

Nicholas feels the emptiness inside him taking shape, not of a warmth, not of feathers, but a tug of duty he needs to perform. Something he never feels on a job. For a job. Except with children.

“Close your eyes and count to 3, okay? Trust me and,” Nicholas is leaning forward from his nonchalant pose to say it to kid’s face with child-like secretiveness. “don’t tell anyone.”

And the moment the boy nods and closes his eyes, Nick disappears into a puff of smoke that used to be all little electrical currents and tongues of fires like outstretched hands ready to devour, now it mostly reminds a bubble of pathetic smog released by an old ass Fiat that deserves to be turned into nothing but scrap metal. Oh, well. The theatrics are one thing. It’s the efficiency that matters.

The moment Nick returns, the boy is gulping in shock, of course sneaking glances the entire time and damn, also a witness to how terrible Nick’s shape got over the years. He’s panting, for crying out loud. Honestly, pathetic.

“Walk with me,” he orders the kid as they do walk away from the cameras for Nick to hand the kid the money like he’s giving him Snickers for lunch. “Use it wisely, okay?”

The kid pauses, looks at the pile of banknotes, then back at Nick (he needs to stretch his head pretty high, like suddenly Nicholas’s got a boost of height in his eyes, too, and became something towering and imposing), then back at the inside of the window display, seeing a sales manager mopping the floor and dancing, as if nothing breaking the routine happened, then back at Nick. “Where’s the catch?” The kid asks and Nicholas thinks if he had a heart it might have broken for the boy. So cynical already. So mistrusting. So deprived of hope.

“The catch is, it’s not a permanent solution, kid. You’re gonna have to try some real life options. And it’s gonna suck big time, but that’s what’s growing up is about. What you’re good at, because it sure as hell ain’t this?” Nick indicates the money in one of the kid’s pocket and a different insurance option in another and smiles sadly.

“How do you know? I could totally pull it off, true action movie robbery not some lame magic trick, like hey, I so could!” the kid practically stomps his leg, with hands on his hips, pouting and frowning, like he doesn’t have a gun in his pocket or a dying mother in his house he wants to ruin his life for, because that’s what you do for love? That’s what you do for those you love, yes? Nicholas can’t help himself, even if touching mortals is forbidden, because it’s dangerous. They can only influence their actions. Their worlds don’t intertwine. Their worlds don’t belong together. There are only threads of what ifs and maybes between them. Aches of wasting their lives as it should be and wondering how it could be.

Nicholas reaches with his hand to pet the kid’s head, making his cap slip adorably backwards, showing his eyes, big, brown eyes of a lost boy. Showing his soul, Nicholas should shudder from. He does. But out of whole different reasons than the sinister crashing with the pure. “Sure you could but now you don’t have to. So what’s your magic trick?”

“Uhm,” the kid looks down, as if ashamed. As if not used to talking about himself in a praising manner. As if not used to talking about himself at all. “They kinda say I’m kinda good at hoops, you know? Decent. I mean, I don’t know, it’s stupid.”

The flashes of a life never lived? Or wasted? assault him, to a decent slow motion montage, not that horrendous shaky cam effect everyone and their grandpa are overusing in modern cinema. He coughs to cover up a whimper, as if it affects him? As if it matters?

“Okay. All right. That’s good,” and then he conjures up a piece of parchment (because they are still being very much cliché here, right?), on which, possibly written in blood, well, at least, in a very bright red font, is an address and a name. The paper obviously appears in a puff of the same lame wisp of smoke that still makes the kid go loud _aaaaaaaaah_ , catching flies. “They offer free classes and there’s a court to use there and they can even pick you up for the team, mister wizard,” Nicholas bops the kid’s nose with the card, as it disappears and is revealed again in the cheapest trick ever, pulled from behind the kid’s ear with Nick’s face beaming teasingly.

“But… I need to take care of my mom?” the boy’s eyes shine with wonder and hope, surprise, it’s there, it was just hidden, very deep, probably not used to being rewarded so never showing up to be scarred by disappointment, again and again and again.

Nicholas chokes again. There’s something in his throat. That burns him. Nothing ever burns him. He’s made of fire, isn’t he?

“Just ….,” he manages to shape the words. “Just give it a try, kid, okay?” and yet he still sounds like he’s pleading?

Great. His mojo is gone along with his entire attitude and he’s at the bottom list of the employees of the week, of the month, of the whole goddamn year. What a sham.

And then the boy gets himself into his space to hug him. To hug him so tight like he wants to pour something into Nicholas. Gratitude, maybe? For what? For bringing back his hope?

_Estrella. You brought hope to this world._

The words echo, to the warmth inside him fluttering with feathers. Like in his dreams (in his memories?). It’s not a hellish heat. It’s something soft and encompassing. Something almost as pure as this boy’s little hand clutching onto Nick’s hoodie. He then sniffles his “Thank you,” and runs away, leaving Nicholas gulping now, like he forgets how to breathe. Like warmth inside him is of divine origins, burning him, burning him on the spot.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he knows the voice. Not only from many times they met before in the exact same circumstances. Whenever the voice emerges from the dark then, that never remains it with him around, that always brims with shimmer of light as if it tries to break through, outside or inside Nicholas? Nicholas doesn’t know, Nick knows he recognizes the voice. From somewhere else. (From the inside or from the outside?).

“And you should really change the record, bro,” his voice sounds strange. Sore. Like he hasn’t used it for a long time. Well, he hasn’t. His mojo is gone, yeah? So that’s the reason. Not the burning in his throat.

Every fucking time.

“Hey, I’m just here to do my job, spread the truth and God’s word and you’re being your usual stubborn self. What am I supposed to do with you, Nicholas?” he comes out of the shadow (that is not really it, that is more a dawn, just before the sun explodes on the sky with morning colours) and Nicholas needs to squint to see. His presence is bright and almost overwhelming and it always hurts Nicholas. But not like a divine presence should. But with emptiness taking shape and swallowing him into the feeling of ice inside.

“Jesus Christ, pardon my French, you should really hand people some ultraviolet shades, like literally, I’m about to go blind,” he still sees him. He still knows him by heart.

Raphael is made of gold. But not shiny and vain like gold is. He’s gold like the autumn in the early September afternoon is. He’s gold like the ground breathing out the morning dew. He’s gold like the sun rays glimmering on the water of the ocean on midday. He’s gold like honey sweeter than sin.

And yes. Nicholas did a PHD in lame poetry. Don’t ask him about it though, please.

Raphael is gold, even if he wears his pink Tshirt with **ἰ** **χθύς** **mean the fish** with Christian image of the fish indeed, still, hanging on the rod, like Raphael is making more than his faith statement this way. He’s also wearing a Real Madrid cap, criminally tight jeans and converse that sort of mirror Nicholas’ ones, except there is no comet on them, but with Christian doves soaring there proudly.

“There was a choice to make, there. And a child was making it. And you shouldn’t have interfered. It’s not how rules work,” Raphael recites the codex to Nicholas yawning ostentatiously, right up his face. It’s no longer as blinding. But the ache remains, making Nick irritated.

“Yadda, yadda, yadda, same old same old. Are you stalking me?”

“Perdóneme?” he’s raising his eyebrow in an expression of childlike comical confusion and Nicholas cannot believe this dude is an archangel, making his life miserable for a while now.

The ache inside him turns to very soft, overcooked noodle. And, no, it’s not gross. More like, very liquid and watery. As overcooked noodle often is.

“I mean, here I am, trying to do my job, and you keep on busting my flow, dude.”

“It’s not even your jurisdiction, Nicholas, and, huh, good to know you’re calling things by their name. You, helping children, often turns out to be your job as it is with demons of high order, si?” the raised eyebrow that continues to mock him but also makes this blinding face look almost affectionate distracts Nick a lot and he pines after the shades to hide himself behind. He’s not in the mood to handle archangels. He’s never in the mood to handle this particular archangel at all.

“That’s hilarious. Are you telling me some dingy, abandoned, outskirts-of-the-city gas station is suddenly your jurisdiction and, even better, you with your holy rules being like let this kid shoot the guy for a money he won’t even get to his mom cos he’s ending up fucked up by the system and dying of overdose in jail or in gang wars, because he has a choice to make and we can’t take away their free will or some other shit is you doing your job, si?” Nicholas spits the last word in contempt and feels the fire within bursting out in fury. Raphael stands close and looks at him with fucking compassion. As archangels often do. And this particular even more often around him.

There might be a little bit of cliché going on around them now, with the weather conditions too. The air crackling, sizzling with energy, the breeze whooshing the leaves from the ground as they dance furiously around them like isolating them from everything else, in their little world. You know. All that jam. Of, _spoiler alert_ , soul mates connection for example.

“Maybe it’s you stalking me. It’s a 5th time this week we meet over a child you save.”

“Are you 5? Like what is this retort even?” Nicholas is saying it so close to Raphael’s face. He feels his breath like hot summer touch of the air on his mouth. 

Get out with these cheesy metaphors, can’t you just say, they could almost be kissing? _But, hey, why would I want to kiss this pain in the ass of an archangel, bro?_ Shut up, Nicholas, you’re not the narrator of this story.

“I’m certainly not 5, Nicholas. Unless, we’re counting hundreds. And I am also simply stating facts,” Raphael is now a beacon, covering Nick’s entire vision, still blinding, still hurting, but also filling him up. All the aching, empty spaces inside him that felt cold and shallow. He leans closer and says in whispers, like he’s praying for Nicholas’ soul. “You’re wasting away here. Come back home.”

“I don’t have a home,” Nick’s eyes are closed and he’s basking in this divine presence, all honour forgotten, all loyalties too. He’s swaying closer and closer to this gravity. Nothing could tear him away from it. There’s a strange feeling on his forearm, too. A tug, that tickles, like licks of that heat tease him there. On the scar he has. In a shape of an unreadable blotch. He doesn’t know what caused it. He doesn’t remember. But he thinks if he looked at it now, it would form an image that would help him guess, maybe. He can’t move, though. Apart from giving in to Raphael’s closeness completely. Like wanting to be swallowed by him, as the words follow.

“You do,” Nicholas more feels, than hears, inside himself, like a caress of his soul.

Like he really does have home. With him. Here . Anywhere. Always.

And then there’s the sound of scratched cd and Zverev’s whiny voice breaks the moment, because life works like that, right, supernatural creatures or not.

“WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE!”

The bubble around them breaks and they both look like waking up from a dream (or a memory) and Nicholas mostly curses himself for being weak and pliant like that. _Again._

“HOW ARE YOU NOT BLIND YET?” the whiny voice continues, hiding behind the lamppost, and peeking at them with giant, ridiculous shades and even more ridiculous hat covering Zverev’s entire face.

“You’re drunk. Wrong blood again, bro,” Nicholas grunts back and he refuses to acknowledge the fact that Raphael’s chuckle to that makes him feel like he’s fluttering with feathers again.

“SERIOUSLY? THIS IS SOME UNREAL SHIT?”

The voice in the background continues to yell in that lamenting manner but Nicholas ignores him to try to look back at Raphael with dignity or even better absolutely unaffected nonchalance as casually asking. “What the fuck does he mean?”

“I’m an archangel, Nicholas. Shadow creatures cave before me. Even if I’m not in my full form. Shadow creatures can’t look at me because I mirror their sins, because I carry their shame and their guilt.”

“Did anyone ever tell you the only thing that might burn people’s eyes is your ego?” Nicholas smirks but it comes across as a smile, apparently, because Raphael joins in and they might be beaming at each other for a moment or 10, lost in this sudden joy they share.

“Which means you, estrella, have a way less corrupted soul than you like to convince everyone around you,” Raphael shares it like a secret and before Nicholas registers what he said, he’s turning into that soft, fluffy, noodle thing inside and it’s warm and it’s good and …

“What did you call me?!” he wakes up from the daze to jolt in shock and demand in a hoarse voice but Raphael is gone, with a theatrical wisp of a glow, like last disappearing ray of the sunset and that place inside Nicholas, with emptiness shaped into something very palpable, shudders with recognition. The skin on his forearm itches.

He looks at it now. The blotch is still shapeless. Even if it’s no longer pale. It looks more crimson-like. Like Nicholas is alive. There’s blood beneath his skin, pumping his blood with hopes and joys and fears and aches.

‘What the revolting frick was that all about?” Zverev crashes into the moment with his baby-ignored-for-way-too-long attitude, all over Nick’s space now, with his shades, now he can see, in the shape of pentagrams, still on his nose, though it’s night and everyone knows only douchebags wear shades in the night. Hey, that would be correct.

“Some would call it divine intervention, I guess, I would call it a pain in my ass,” Nicholas summaries in a grunting manner, heading for their pub, not waiting for Zverev to join in. Though he throws, offhanded: “What do you want anyway, fledgling?” he mocks Russian accent to Alexander showing him his tongue and almost falling over his own too long legs, when rushing after Nick (or more like flailing).

“Stefanos hasn’t been in the pub for like a week, now?”

“And this matters, because?”

“Pft, of course it doesn’t matter,” Zverev does a gesture of swatting away an invisible fly but his voice sounds urgent and he’s not fooling anyone, apart from himself. “But like also, what is going on? You know how blood of the fairies is valuable on the market!”

“No, I don’t. Cos I’m not a creep who pines after a fairy because they’re horny for their blood.”

“Excuse me, it’s more than that and also I DO NOT PINE AT ALL, if you must know,” Alexander is gulping on the air, even though he does not have to breathe but that’s what’s compulsive lying does to you, even if you’re a vampire.

“Anyway, Tsitsipas doesn’t even go here, dude. He’s a fairy. Fairies are like cats. If he visits a shithole we waste our time every night in it’s because I’m awesome and who could stay away,” Nick flaunts at Alexander’s snorts of annoyance. “I bet he’s meditating somewhere in Thailand, away from some whiny douchebags and the likes.”

“How do you know that? Like…?” Alexander is probably so affected by the fact Nicholas knows things about Stefanos that escaped his attention (not that he paid any attention to these things anyway, Alexander does mostly pine after that long, pale neck and the smell of his hair and his long, tanned legs and he just wants to feast on every available piece of Stefanos which doesn’t make him a creep at all, how do you even assume?) that he forgets to act offended at the implication of him being a whiny douchebag.

“Because I talk and use words, instead of stare from the corner like a horny weirdo.”

“You talk to Stefanos? Like, how do you do that?” Alexander’s eyes are big and round and very blue and look like shining with stars, like a little kid asking about explanation for the logic of the rules making the universe spin and Nicholas wonders how the hell did he end up in this teenage drama CW show and why is this his purgatory.

*

_Raphael loves these little moments just before the dawn, when the nature from the night’s slumber shudders back to life, with birds eager to announce the first sunlight and insects joining them in symphony. The world around him is plunged in darkness, the lowest point of the day, just before the glow of sunrise touches the horizon to set the sky on fire._

_But not to him. He can see life brimming bright in the ground, in the air, under water, even beneath the impenetrable layer of lazy and sleep night. Even though his own divine light is lulled inside his soul, settled there peacefully, not to distract the fish, but maybe more importantly, not to expose him._

_Yep. He is supposed to be on the night’s watch of lost souls, roaming, seeking guidance, or just comforting presence (all these calls for help seem to intensify at night, as if night releases all the demons from the closets and monsters from under the bed the most). But tonight it’s been quiet for a while not, so Raphael does what he always does when sent on a mission to protect the sheep – which is pulls out the rod from his traveling backpack (no one ever asks him what he carries inside, maybe they already have their suspicions and prefer to pretend they don’t know just in case the Big Boss investigated later on)._

_The water reflects the last remnants of the moonlight, looking like the world’s mirror showing the sins of the past and hopes for the future, when the voice interrupts Raphael’s serene time with the nature._

_“I thought I might find you here, my son,” the Big Boss is here. Of course Raphael didn’t hear him. It’s the Big Boss, he created this world, he knows how to move in it like the demiurge of every little particle, the very master of details and nuisances._

_It’s pointless to act like he’s not been doing what he’s been doing so he only manages to look sheepish, hoping he’s going to be forgiven another time. There’s been many times he was caught in the act like that. The Big Boss still trusts him to perform his duties anyway._

_“It’s been quiet. People are happy. People are dreaming of better tomorrow.”_

_“Of course they are. Never content with the now,” the Big Boss moves slowly, carries the walking stick, is short and frail, going bald, his nose sharp and crooked and his eyes watery and old, like he’s seen so much, too much, good and bad and feels accomplished but also very tired. They used to call him Rocket now he’s only an echo of a legend, does he exist or is he merely a figment of mass imagination, was his myth created or did he turn into a myth that used to herald the truth?_

_There’s aura around him, he hasn’t had for a while now, like his light was becoming dimmer and dimmer. But tonight, he glows. Except it’s a reflected light. Of someone else. Someone trodding behind him, slumped and defeated, tall and dark. Nothing but a silhouette, like a shadow carved from the night around him with the glow coming from within him. Suppressed, or hidden or denied?_

_“I brought you someone, then. If people are peaceful, like you say, there’s another soul that needs guidance,” and the Big Boss makes room for the shadow to come forth as it reluctantly does. “This is Nicholas. He’s joined our ranks and needs to be taught few things.”_

_“Joined is an overstatement of the century, old man, you making the worst decision of your life and employing me is more like it,” Nicholas mumbles with sarcastic ignorance, stepping from one foot to another, impatient and annoyed with being here at all._

_Raphael makes his assessment. Now. That he can see him clearly, even if the night is very dark, but the light shining within reveals this boy wholly. With his melancholic eyes, shining with thousands of emotions, with his sharp features that make him look stunning like a work of art in the museum but his expression softens them into child-like genuiety. He’s tall and lanky, but there’s grace and leanness to it too. And the light coming from within him is scintillating._

_“Eager student, I see,” Raphael smirks, but with an affection. The Almighty has his own purposes always, so Raphael doesn’t question the agenda. Ever. He’s here to do his duty. Always._

_“Very,” the Big Boss chuckles warmly and then reaches for Nicholas’ arm, reassuringly, petting it and continuing. “We will still see you shine, my boy. And you will still know yourself.” And then he’s gone, just like he appeared. Swift as a wind, quiet as a fog. Demiurge of the elements, knowing how to blend in with them. How to become them._

_“So, this is awkward and you’re clearly busy so I’ll be off your hair,” Nicholas is moving. It seems like he hasn’t stopped moving since he got here, whether with his hands or on the spot. Like this light inside him is physical energy bursting free from within him._

_“Where are you rushing to, Nicholas?” Raphael goes back to gripping his rod and fishing, somehow sure of the boy and him staying._

_“Uhm, nowhere? But…”_

_“Then come and sit by me,” Raphael’s hand pets the place on the quay he’s dangling his legs from. He feels more than sees the boy moving closer, the aura beaming from him scattering the night, waking the aurora before her time._

_The boy still hesitates, his body restless, the energy brimming, as he stands closer now, but still not sure if he should take the seat. “I’m not good at sitting, you know. In one place. Not doing much and all.”_

_“Then tell me what you are good at?” it’s like waiting for a cat to come to you on its own terms. Raphael always understood cats more than he did dogs, something the Big Boss and the hoard of Angels always mocked him about. A cat whisperer, they would call him. An ability that might come particularly in handy now._

_The cat does come to him, takes his seat, close, not too close, so that their thighs are almost touching, making Raphael feel how much energy the boy emits. Like the core of a star angels are said to come from. When it falls and shatters and becomes them._

_What happens to an angel that falls and shatters? What do they become? A lost soul like Nicholas? Or something else?_

_“Not fishing, for sure,” Nicholas laughs, it’s a small, single sound but Raphael would like to hear it more often, he muses._

_“Have you ever fished?”_

_“No.”_

_“Then, how do you know, you’re not good at it?”_

_“Touché. So, what’s the fuss about with fishing?” the way Nick sounds resembles the cat nudging Raphael with his little nose, trusting and curious and demands to be showered with attention. Raphael smiles to himself, eager to provide._

_So Raphael starts to tell him what the art of being a good fisherman is about. He talks about perfect balance between strength and patience, about steel focus but also knowing how to wait for our chance, how to not rush anything, how to make the fish come to you instead of chasing it. He talks about being skillful with the rod, strong like with a hammer but graceful too like with a brush. He talks about nature being so very still and gentle and you at the very heart of it, like invited to the household, like invited to the bedroom, waiting for the dawn can’t get more intimate than that._

_Nicholas jiggles his leg, pulls on the fabric of his sweatpants, scratches his head, and brims with the energy the entire time, his light breaking through more and more. He doesn’t even see it himself. The way the place from pitch black, has started to turn grayish, soft orange prelude to dawn._

_Nicholas tries out the techniques with the rods Raphael has a collection of and he’s a bit too enthusiastic with it, disturbing the surface of the water too much. Making the fish scatter into mistrust and fear._

_“You must coax them into safety, you can’t be an intruder in their home, but a kind visitor, asking for permission. You are not an invader, you are a partner to a conversation.”_

_“But don’t you eat them afterwards?” Nicholas asks with so much child-like innocence, his eyes like two golden stars lost on the night sky of the desert. Raphael’s wings flutter protectively under his skin. He covers up the encompassing feeling of protectiveness that almost knocks the breath out of him with a cough that turns to soft chuckle._

_“Well, that’s how eco system works, Nicholas. But, no. I don’t fish for food.”_

_“Why, then?”_

_“To find myself as a part of a whole,” Raphael answers, sure and believing. He’s been a part of the creation and it fills him up with joy. With faith. He was meant to be an angel of the Lord._

_“Wow. That’s some heavy shit,” Nicholas sums it up, gaping in wonder, though. Like he can’t relate. “So, it’s back to me imposing, then,” he really doesn’t, feeling like an element sticking out, not fitting, ruining the balance._

_“No,” Raphael reaches out with his hand to cover Nicholas’ palm clutching the edge of the quay, like seeking the same belonging Raphael was talking about. And Raphael rushes to give it to him. To make him feel it. “You are not imposing,” with words too._

_“Uhm. Okay,” Nicholas sounds sore and quiet, when he looks at their hands joined and then into Raphael’s face. A cat faced with unexpected form of affection, he never maybe had before or recognizes as familiar and terribly missed. “Good. That’s good.”_

_Rods and fish forgotten, they sit like this, hands brushing, Nicholas twinkling with light like early stars on the sky just after sunset or before sunrise and Raphael wondering how the Big Boss knew. To find the missing pieces like that. He’s a demiurge. How could he not know?_

_“Have you ever seen the sunrise?” Raphael breaks the comfort of silence they share, feeling the sun peeking through the line of the horizon, getting closer and closer to expose them to the world._

_“Not sober,” Nicholas laughs, but there’s sadness to it. Like he wishes he did. Not like before. But with eyes opened and seeing and knowing._

_“You missed a lot, then,” Raphael says and means not only sunrise. Raphael thinks this boy, not knowing he’s glowing like the sky doesn’t even need the sun anymore, missed everything that’s important about him and his life in general._

_The sun finally comes, lights up the line of the horizon into softest pink, turning to orange, becoming the whole palette of the day with rosy cheeks, raising to have a sip of fresh breeze and a wisp of early dew. And Raphael watches Nicholas basking in the first sunrays of the morning. This morning light pales in comparison. This boy’s awe shines with so much innocence. In spite of him wearing his black hoodie, his attitude, his frown and skepticism. None of it casts shadow on that innocence driven light that begs to be released inside him._

_“That’s pretty incredible,” he practically whispers, like confessing a holy secret. Maybe this is what it is for him: seeing this raw beauty of the world, the demiurge’s blessing, for the first time in his life. That’s poignant. That’s holy._

_“Hmmm,” Raphael hums in agreement, not tearing his gaze away from Nicholas’s face, making him look back when he adds. “Still it pales in comparison, estrella.”_

_The way the boy lets him hold the gaze, his mouth parted in wonder, but maybe because he gasps in shock, too, leaves Raphael hopeful that the boy knows about his own light and maybe one day he won’t be ashamed or afraid to show it, fully._

What feels like million years later Raphael traces the surface of one of the rods melancholically. He hasn’t been fishing for a long time. Because he hasn’t felt a part of the whole anymore. He hears the echo of the words, too.

_“So, you haven’t told me what you’re good at?”_

_“Sitting and fishing, apparently. But don’t tell anyone, it’s only with you.”_

So, it’s become _their_ thing. Until there was no more _them_.

*

Sure enough. Stefanos is indeed in Thailand. He might have started a little cult there too, in his white robe and golden hair reaching now the middle of his back, and looking like a meadow of golden goodies where elves really do have picnics. They find him by the trail of dazed people and creatures, singing old folk songs in Greek and looking absolutely high, though they are not. At least not on alcohol. Nor drugs. They raise their voices in lamenting vocalization, repeating Stefanos’ name, being basically live road signs this way.

Zverev was pestering him the entire time about Stefanos’ absence, talking about ridiculous scenarios of gangs kidnapping him to harvest his fairy properties into a line of perfumes or what not.

They are shadow creatures so they are not affect the same way the mortals are. But Stefanos does smell amazing and Nicholas can only imagine how maddening the sensation is for poor hormonal flesh bags. And for Zverev, too. Zverev who acts like the same intoxicated moron, even though he is supposed to be immune due to his sinister nature of a vampire. And yet, here they are, in the middle of a beach in Thailand with Stefanos conducting hedonistic party that might really be an orgy, except people also hold some environmentally friendly slogans, bake and sell vegan cookies and do actual yoga.

What a mess.

“Okay, he’s safe. We can go,” Alexander comments to Nick looking at him incredulously.

“Read my lips, Zverev. You. Are. A. Dumbass and I’m staying for the cookies.”

“Hello, Alexander. Are you here to join us, perhaps?” Stefanos descends upon them, like a mist smelling of fresh fruit with a grace of a butterfly.

“That’s rich. Like I don’t have anything to do with my time?” Zverev flaunts and pouts and puffs up too and the combination is so ridiculous Nicholas cannot grasp for the love of …. Holy fuck how this one does his predatory job as a night demon ever.

“Interesting. So you came for the cookies?” Stefanos sounds like he’s singing the same anthems the crowd did to his tribute.

“I came for the sun. To get some tan, if you must know.”

Zverev not getting the message about him being a dumbass always lends up being this and people around him going through second-hand embarrassment over him proving to be one often and loudly like that.

“Hmm, aren’t you a vampire?” Stefanos hums melodically, picture of innocence and calm, his eyes gleaming with mirth, though.

“That’s vampirephobic!”

“I believe there is no such word but I am up for contributing to languages always,” watching them both on the outside, playing their game of WHEN WILL THEY BANG is not on the list of favourite pastime for Nicholas at all. He looks for a pretext to make himself scarce. He can tune in to watch this cliché crap on any streaming service anyway. He does not need this in real time. “The sun, you say. Isn’t it evening time, though, Alexander?”

It’s honestly miserable to watch. Grilling a vampire like that. Not a pretty sight at all.

“Not in the sauna!”

What is even this answer. Nicholas hides his face in his hands for himself and for Zverev too.

“Fabulous, then. I have a room for two, as if waiting for you too,” Stefanos brings himself closer, along with him the aura of music and rainbow and gold and smells that reach even them. He whispers close to Zverev’s face with intent. “come.” And then he laces their hands together, Nicholas doesn’t miss Zverev’s needy whimper and he’s stealing them away in the direction of a wooden shack, isolated with a colourful PRIVATE sign from the rest of the eager crowd. “Please, excuse us, Nicholas,” Stefanos adds in the distance, always the savoir vivre guy, the voice sounds more like that gentle message commercials of relaxations zones have.

“By all means. Fuck the cringe away,” Nick mumbles to no one in particular, because these two are long gone for a marathon of releasing pent up sexual tension for a week or two so he sets off for a stall with a pile of vegan cookies.

@

These cookies might be vegan. But it wouldn’t be a hedonistic hippie party if the fillings were not about herbs _opening the invisible eye and letting the mind wander to the edges of the universe to seek yourself further and beyond_ Stef’s voice should come as a manual or a warning or does anyone even give a fuck really? These guys are already high on Stefanos’ so what’s a little cookie will do anyway.

Nicholas ends up sprawled on a sun bed and dreams or remembers?

_‘We can’t do this.”_

_“Oh yes, we can.”_

_“It’s not allowed.”_

_“Live a little, Raph,” Nicholas drags Raphael by his hand right to the center of a basketball court of some dingy neighbourhood, with groups of enthusiastically screaming kids ascending on them like a swam of buzzing little bees._

_The voice at the back of his head screams about Raphael being there, so close, not letting his hand go, overwhelming, warm, sun on the sky in his palms. His. Raphael is his matahari. Raphael has always been his matahari. But how? When? Is this real?_

_“Okay, little fellas. This is how it’s going to work. If I’m blocking your shot, you end up on my team. And if Raph blocks you, you’re with him,” Nick is bouncing the ball while explaining the rules, looking entirely in his own element, his heart pounding with excitement to the sound of the music in the background and the kids enthusiastic chatter mingling with it._

_Raphael puts his hands on his hips, judging, no longer the fact they are here, with mortal children, interfering, like divine beings shouldn’t, but because of the choice of sport, apparently._

_“How is this even remotely close to fishing?” Nicholas thinks he can see a pout on Raphael’s face and his wings threaten to burst out of his skin to flutter eagerly. He clutches his fists to control himself, though._

_“Who here wants to fish?” Nick asks the crowd of children chatting away and is met with a wave of an intensifying booing, making a face at Raphael that entirely resembles very gleeful and smirking I TOLD YA SO._

_“Excuse me, but the art of fishing is grossly misunderstood and underrat…” Nicholas doesn’t let Raphael finish. He’s petting his shoulder with exaggerated affection, interrupting him mid-sentence._

_“Cool, cool, cool, cool, grandpa, let’s keep it for a goodnight story, okay?”_

_Raphael’s pout is now accompanied by his eyebrow shaped into expression of offended skepticism and Nicholas might be clutching the skin on his forearm a little bit too desperately now, fighting an urge to wrap them in fluttery softness of his wings, to hold onto him, to hold him. His matahari._

_“Trust me on this one, okay? These little guys are hyperactive. Fishing won’t do them any good,” he murmurs and Raphael murmurs back, bringing them very close now and Nicholas almost stops the time, as he’s capable of, to have them be still and basking in this moment._

_“It did for you,” there’s a secretive smile on Raphael’s lips. Like fishing is already their thing. Like they have their thing. Nicholas drowns in the moment, the seconds ticking slower and slower, until the kids disturb the wires, pushing them back on track, stealing the ball from Nick and rushing to the court to play their match for the group placement._

_“Go, get’em tiger,” Raphael nudges Nicholas in motivation._

_“Someone’s been watching too much Netflix dramas,” Nick smirks in response._

_“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Raphael shrugs innocently and then confesses like he’s purring and Nicholas’ legs get very weak and soft and he thinks he’s about to spectacularly lose his first basketball game ever. “Show them what you’re made of, I’ll be your cheerleading squad.”_

_He doesn’t lose. The kids play their hearts out with all the staff of the orphanage joining them to cheer. Raphael leading the cheering squad. As promised. Nicholas throws glances at him, he’s drawn to this beacon of warm and light and good and his eyes shine the same way they did when the sun was rising that first time they met, reflecting the new dawn, the new hope, the new beginning in warm brown like chestnut on honey._

_So back to cheesy poetry? Pft._

_When his team wins the kids run to him and cover him whole with tickling hands, loud laughs and cheers. They practically knock him to the ground, drowning him in attention, eagerness and synchronized chants._

_“If you’re going to kill him with kindness like that, there’s not going to be a pizza for you, amigos,” Raph is there, with his helping hand and a teasing, warm smile to lift Nick up and take the attention of the kids onto himself. Sure enough, the buzzing bees swarm him now, their hands outstretched, chants turning to pizza anthems, demanding the price. “He’s buying,” Raphael adds, eyebrows raised unapologetically to Nicholas murmuring. “Chaos monger.”_

_“The last one without a pair eats the smallest slice,” Nick roars the order to organize the mess of overenthusiastic little monsters greedy for their well deserved snacks and as the group starts forming pairs and turns into a more or less manageable Raphael pulls Nick aside. By a touch of his hand on his shoulder, that brings back the feeling of feathery softness inside. Like Nicholas being a celestial being is always absolutely closely linked to Raphael being there, bringing forth that light at the very core of his soul. His pure. His good. His divine._

_“Good game, mi estrella,” he says and his mouth is moving and it is shaping words but Nicholas doesn’t hear them. He more senses them with fluttering comfort deep inside him._

_Raphael’s been using the name for quite a while now. Nicholas never asked him what it means. But when he looks into Raphael’s eyes now, that sunrise brown of summer morning, reminding him of a place that maybe used to be home for him, where there was an ocean and green and wild and untouched by wrong and askew of the world, he thinks he finally knows exactly what mi estrella means._

Nicholas doesn’t know if he’s dreaming or remembering and the cookies are actually good so he clings to the images some more, desperate and lost and aching and mostly very much pathetic.

_At the pizza place Nick uses his angelic gifts on people there to get children everything there is on the menu without spending a penny, considering they are heavenly creatures and don’t know how currency work and are beyond such materialistic necessities._

_Except, hello, there is no existing in the world of humans without being all about materialistic necessities, as it is, the world of humans is made of nothing but materialistic necessities. So, they need to improvise._

_“Excuse me? This is how you call it?” Raph is pouting, with his hands crossed on his chest. He is wearing a hoodie Nick picked up for him with some inappropriate fishing metaphors Raphael is completely oblivious to, which is “Amateur Hooker” (with an image of a hook and a rod), hey, this one was the most subtle one, the staff of the orphanage was charmed into ignoring and the kids had seen worse in their miserable lives, sadly, so they probably consider Raph to be an awkward trying-to-be-cool kind of a big brother type, rather harmless in general and in the area of swag attitude for sure._

_“Hey, you said I’m paying. So, I am. With my charm,” Nick is stuffing himself on a pizza, in the booth surrounded by the ruckus of overexcited children devouring at least second box of their pizza delicacies._

_“You’re not charming me, Nicholas. This is not charm. Charm is when you show these kids there is another way, when you guide them to better tomorrow, from that miserable, hopeless life on the court. Charm is when you smile at them and make them smile back at you like there is a better tomorrow and not even sun rising up in the morning compares,” Raphael starts coughing randomly, as if he said too much and avoids Nicholas’s peering eyes, and also, the entire time, desperately avoids looking at the delicious slices of pizza, refusing to take part in this blatant misconduct they are currently performing so loud and out in the open._

_“So when I do all of that, it means I’m charming you?” Nicholas slurps on the mushroom from his topping (Raphael refuses to look when Nick stuffs himself with every ingredient available he ordered on his topping, making sounds from loud smacks to excited hums and Raphael hopes the sounds are loud enough to cover up the fact his stomach rumbles like he’s human and very much into materialistic necessities in the end). Face of pure innocence, eyes pleading and hopeful._

_“Don’t change the subject, estrella,” Raph concludes, practically admitting with the way he uses the endearment, that he is at the mercy of Nicholas’s charm all the time. “This is an abuse of power what we are doing here and you know it.” Raphael goes from pouting to wearing his lecture time face, eyebrows furrowed, wrinkling his forehead into an expression of focus and discipline._

_Nicholas drops his slice of pizza back onto the box. The children are singing a song, some of them are throwing pieces of pizza at each other, the laughter, the music fills up the place to the brink, making it almost glow with energy. Like back at home. Or a place Raphael calls one, Nick never understood as one._

_“How is this abusing power? How is giving these children a piece of life they never had before it an abuse of power?”_

_“What about people working for this place? We are eating their food. We are stealing their earnings. We are leaving them at the mercy of their employers, to explain all of this. Who do you think will eventually pay for this? Or are you going to charm their employers, too?”_

_Nicholas feels fluttery feeling of warmth inside him sizzle. It happens all the time. He’s clashing with all the rules and regulations, whenever he goes out there, into the world, to guide, to assist, to save, to show the way. “It’s not about showing them the way, Nicholas. It’s about helping them believe and stay on the path of their choosing,” Raphael often reminds him and Nicholas struggles with understanding. He rages at the injustice. He hates the righteousness of their “job”. “You can’t save people from themselves. You are not God, either.”_

_“Why is giving orphans good memories, wrong? Why is healing sick children, wrong? Why is using this power we have to fix things, wrong?” he always lets this get to him so deep. To the point he almost feels like he’s bleeding. Like he’s mortal. And can be hurt. Or used to._

_Raphael reaches for Nick’s hand on the table. Something Nicholas taught him. Physical contact. Or affection, really. Something Raphael was not so aware of before. Nick’s friendly slaps on the shoulder, Nick nudging him during great meetings, to share a joke or make a face, Nick being close, in his personal space, to just talk to him, but as much with his body as with his words. Even though they have no notion of their physicality. They shouldn’t. Nicholas woke this side of him to life and Raphael was full of these small gestures he learned from Nick, now. But Nick is choking on injustice of it all, so Nick escapes the touch now. Nick escapes Raph’s methodical ignorance. “You call this, power, estrella. It’s not power. It’s a gift. It’s a blessing. If you treat it like power, where will this end? Will this end? How will you know when to stop and if you crossed the lines or not?”_

_“Don’t call me that! I hate it when you call me that!” and Nick is snapping his fingers, his face empty, his eyes cold, his voice hoarse, like he’s been shouting for a while, like the yell from within was trying to come out. The time slows down, the laughter and singing dies down and everything goes to reverse. And just like that they are back to the moment when no children ever came here, to eat their favourite pizza, to create memories to remember forever, to fill the air with joy and hope. The staff is busy with serving random customers. Raphael sits by the empty table, with no more pizza of piled topping to tempt him and Nicholas is raising up, the aura of invisibility shimmering around him, cocooning them from the outside and then he spats with a sneer._

_“All done. The kids are back to their rooms like this day never happened, most of them planning to escape, other making each other’s lives miserable. The staff here earns their money, still thinking to themselves where it all went wrong and when will this shitty day end and we can go back to the boss with clean report of doing absolutely nothing.”_

Nick’s back to reality with painful ringing in his head and hollowness inside him (where his soul should be?). The place where his red marking shimmers on his skin now burns with an ache of something unfulfilled. Like there are all the answers under his skin wanting to break free, wanting to get out in the open and inevitably burn everything down to the ground.

“Too much vegan food after all the junk diet you do did you in, kiddo?” There’s fucking Novak in his vision, with his giant, green, gold, brown, blue eyes of a stoned cold killer, looking somewhat concerned, leaning over Nick (why is he leaning over him?) and reaching out to lift him up (why is he planning to lift him up?). Yep. Nicholas is apparently lying on the cold ground that used to be a beach where he was having a relaxation time of his life. Not anymore. He’s outside their pub, doesn’t remember how he got there for shit, his body weak and like physical (and human) and his head exploding with noise, like he’s hangover, like he knows and remembers what it feels.

That’s pathetic, and surely more pathetic than accepting Novak’s helping hand to lift him up back to at least remnants of dignity. The skin on his arm still stings. A ghost of a memory. A connection. The truth.

“And you care, because…?” he shakes off an invisible dust from his **333 I’M ONLY HALF EVIL** hoodie and scrambles his composure (or his swag, or both really) from the ground too to cling to it somehow.

“You’re making the business look weak, tvrdoglavi dečko.”

“Because this place is otherwise the bomb with the customers that are not some pathetic, evil losers, coming in here to waste their goddamn time, yeah?”

“Everything can become a goldmine if you only know which buttons to push,” Novak smirks to Nicholas wanting to make a vomiting gesture back at him.

“Please, don’t use your capitalistic slogans on me. Best case scenario, I’m going to get indigestion, worst case scenario, I find a grain of truth there.”

“Come on, mrzovoljna baka, let me buy you a gluten free drink. My treat,” Novak guides him inside Fallen Paradise, even if this happens never and they never hang out and he literally hates the guy and his obnoxious pretentiousness. And yet, there’s something weak and hollow inside him, that makes him vulnerable and tired and somehow ending up giving in to these exact circumstances. Dignity left crumbling on the ground, in the end.

“Do I really want to know?” Nicholas grunts back, walking unwillingly, still walking inside, to a familiar blues music sipping in the background, the ever present not mystical but very much dinginess of the place driven smoke in the air and few scattered miserable customers, playing their pool, operating the music box to dig out even more ancient pathetic songs from the 70s about deal with the Devil, leaving a girl behind, drinking that whiskey and driving in a Cadillac into the horizon to wrestle your demons. Pft. Can they all be more cliché?

“Maybe you don’t. But you will. And you will looooove it,” Novak purrs it to his ear, eugh creepy and gross but Nicholas is possibly out of fucks to give at this point and he needs to make his skin stop itching (he wonders what the sign shows now but he refuses to look) and this absence inside him to stop shaping into possibly a missing soul.

Also Zverev’s there, in the corner, on the red sofa usually occupied by the crowd playing Cards Against the Humanity or pathetic rounds of Charades on SUPERNATURAL THEMES. He’s wrapped in Stefanos and if it weren’t for the fact he would know these giraffe, lanky legs anywhere, Zverev is being so eagerly devoured by Stefanos on his lap (even if this is supposed to be his area of expertise) Nicholas wouldn’t actually see him. Zverev is glowing, too, which helps with becoming visible and means that Stef was gracious enough to share his sparkling, magic blood (ha, Zverev will be dazzling now, as he always secretly yearned for, which means even more cringe experience for Nick, oh jolly, he’s not showing anywhere public with this idiot now). Zverev’s hands are clutching to Stef, wandering up and down of his back, mostly down to his very nicely shaped ass, pushing Stef closer and, wow, ain’t that coming out of the closet with a serious bang for these two. Whatever. At least this place won’t look as dark and dingy and miserable anymore with Zverev, high on Stef’s blood and most probably other fluids, not that Nick cares, eugh too much information, thank you very much, walking around like a goddamn beacon. Good for him.

*

He promised himself to stay away. His skin aches, like stretched too tight, like he’s changing. Like he’s a corporeal being. The red marking on his arm looks like a map made of puzzles, just like his memories are. There are also stinging scars on his back, resembling cracks on the desert ground whipped by scorching sun. Feeling them, even just seeing them in the mirror makes him feel like he’s that ground, and the sun flares feel like lashes to him.

He promised himself to stay away, and yet here he is. Outside the church, waiting, hoping, expecting. The holy ground doesn’t burn him, the prospect of the truth, does. That pull he can’t fight, bringing him back to where he might belong. Bringing him back home.

“Are you thinking of changing a profession?” Raphael emerges from the nearby park, in soft aura of light, calming, soothing, but there’s an edge to it. Nicholas wonders how bright it can get. How lethal. How overwhelming. And would it feel like whips of sun flares or caress of soft, familiar hand? Raphael is wearing white and he couldn’t be more blinding. Nicholas questions this guy’s skills to be able to blend in but then again he thinks no amount of camouflage abilities would be able to hide the amount of illumination enveloping Raphael whenever he goes.

“Are you scared of a competition?” Nick says with a teasing tone. Familiarity between them so much easier, so much more known, now with dreams (memories) of them being inseparable part of his daily routine.

“No. Nicholas. I’m no longer scared,” Raphael faces him now, his face betraying nothing, but the words sound melancholic. The words sound like the emptiness on his inside feels. Like it has a shape. Like it’s phantom pain.

“Fearless Raphael, then. Isn’t this one of the deadly sins? The Big Boss can punish you for it. Careful.”

Raphael doesn’t break eye contact and Nicholas remembers the dreams (the memories) of a warm summer dawn filled with warm gold. Gashes on his back feel like caress now. “I have been already punished. I failed. And I have to live with this now.”

“That’s not dramatic or vague at all,” Nicholas chuckles, but it sounds shaky. His throat feels thick. Like he’s on that desert. With whipped ground, his skin. He dares and asks. “Who did you fail?”

They are very close now. This shouldn’t work at all. They are a contradiction. They are an antithesis. But the pull is there, the air around them shifting, creating a copula around them of their own world. Nicholas carries fire inside himself but now he carries the warmth of the rising sun. Of the truth waking up.

“Myself. But mostly someone I cared for very deeply. Someone I thought of as a family. As home.”

Nicholas is made of fire and ashes and ill intents and amoral hedonism but now he feels like he’s made of nothing but flesh and skin that yearns for Raphael, like melting under the flares coming from him to merge with the very core of him. He moves even closer, the cocoon of safety around them pulling them to belong. “Home? What is home?” he asks in a small voice of a boy left in the dead of the night, waiting for someone, anyone to find him. “Who are you? How do I know you?”

He’s drowned in sensations then. Fluttery softness inside him manifests on the outside, all around him, safe, soft, known, _his_ , it used to be _his_.

Raphael is holding him. With is arms and with his wings.

He can recognize dim feeling of scars on his back, the mark on his arm flaring up but it all drowns under encompassing serenity.

He’s home and he’s never known any other home but this.

His hands move on their own to sense the same softness that is inside him, outside. The softness shudders under his fingers, like it recognizes the familiar and he reaches for more of it. Raphael’s wings respond to Nick’s touch the same way Nick’s body responds to Raphael’s closeness. There is no ending of one and no beginning of the other.

Raphael keeps him close, with his wings, with his body, with his entire presence. The hands on his back, large and securing and Nicholas more senses than hears with his face in the crook of Raphael’s neck the words unlocking his heart.

“Mi estrella.”

And he sees. And he remembers.

_It was always so easy to find Raphael because of the amount of energy he emits. The sunrays touching the sky with orange and purple and light gold at dawn. That’s what he was. That’s how he felt. Nicholas never saw him in full glory, though. Shinning with the strength of the midday sun, almost relentless, almost merciless, but also the source of all life. He never did, until now._

_Heaven was a strangely ordinary place, resembling a corporation, full of white corridors, rooms with desks, also libraries with scripture and big halls for ceremonies (such as welcoming poor dead folk, casually placing bets on people’s lives – something the Big Boss condemned but not many angels took it to heart, sending out blessings for the newborns – you’re going to need this one little fella like damn, my condolences)._

_But Nicholas never was in this room before. Complete bare space, drowning in white, in eerie silence and now filled with growing overwhelmingly bright light that unmistakably belonged to Raphael. Nick would have recognized it at the edge of the world. He never saw anything more beautiful, pure, pulsing with shades of gold and good and hope and life. Raphael is standing in the middle of this pristine white space, his wings outstretched to their full range, enormous and intimidating, golden like the sun in full flare, covering the entire world, but to shield it, to protect it, too. The light glow around them makes them look fluttery and soft, but like they can be an armour of a warrior as well. Raphael has his eyes closed. His face an image of focus and calm, but he is wincing from time to time, silent gasps and muffled whimpers coming from his mouth. Nicholas feels anxiety and distress, the connection growing between them, with Raphael guiding him, teaching him, helping him endure the challenges of this place, lets Nick feel the very core of him often. There is an echo of pain there, physical and emotional. Shades of despair and hopelessness. There is anguish piercing through but swallowed by Raphael’s sounds of discomfort and his light growing more encompassing to diminish the pain._

_Nicholas thinks he can hear the sensations taking the shapes of words._

_“Please, help her, make the pain go away.”_

_“Please, don’t let it happen. I beg you.”_

_“Please, make it go away. I can’t live like this anymore.”_

_“Please, kill me.”_

_“Why are you punishing me?”_

_pleasewhynohelpgod_

_The words start to blend into litany of the same phrases repeated over and over again. And so they become sensations again, like punches, like whips and Nicholas feels his whole physical form growing weary and aching with them. But Raphael is still standing. Even though there are tremors in his light aura, his wings do shiver too, and his body sinks under the assault of the avalanche of prayers that are like fists, or scratches, or spits or open wounds bleeding._

_Nicholas doesn’t know how long he’s been enduring this. It could have been hours. It could been days. But time stands still here. Time is infinite here. And so does this torment. Yet Raphael remains untouched, unbroken, taking all these prayers onto himself to suffer for them? Nicholas breaks under the realisation and crumbles physically with a whimper echoing in the space, pulling Raphael out of the trans._

_“Estrella?” the concern, the ache in him as he rushes to help him up. Though his body must be sour, his soul must fester from the hurts consumed._

_“Why? Why are you doing this?” Nicholas lets himself be lifted, clutching to Raphael’s skin, trailing his hands up his arms, his chest, like trying to mend him, looking for the scars after whips and punches the human kind dared to afflict on him._

_“I’m all right, Nicholas. What are you looking for?” Raphael closes his hands on Nick’s shoulder, to keep him up, to keep him whole, to keep him reassured. Nicholas’ hands are trembling, trying to reach any skin available, to see if there is no scar tissue remaining._

_“You were hurting. You were in pain. I need to fix you. I need to make it go away.”_

_“Hush, estrella. It’s all right,” Raphael pulls him close to calm him down with an embrace of his arms and his wings. Nicholas’s silvery ones flutter in restlessness, bristle like a fur of a cat does when it hisses at the danger or in hostility. Nick’s hands still wonder hastily all over Raphael’s body, like a little child desperately trying to charm reality. No. You’re not hurt. You’re not hurt. Raphael makes hushing sounds, melodic, soft, like a lullaby. Their wings settle over each other and Nicholas clings to him for calm and safety._

_“Why do you do this?” Nicholas asks, not letting Raphael go, afraid he would crumble without him. Or the other way round. Or the connection is so strong they both would._

_“What do you mean, estrella?”_

_“Why do you let yourself go through their pain?”_

_“Because they ask me to? Because they pray to us for help? Because this is why we are here to be there for them when they falter, when they fall. May the angels watch me through the night, and keep me in their blessed sight,” Raphael recites the prayers he probably hears every time he gives himself away to them. Their guardian and protector._

_“You said we can’t interfere. You said we can’t help them, you said…” Nick is beseeching, his hands pushing on Raphael’s chest with defiance, with frustration, with offense. It doesn’t really matter that much they continue to choke him with all the rules and regulations. It matters that they dare to defile his Sun like that._

_“No, Nicholas. I never said that. What we mustn’t do is violate their right to have free will. To making a choice. To living their life freely and independently, as they were blessed to by the Lord,” Raphael says it with his firm dedication, the space around them bright with the light from within him, purest faith, in a physical form, Raphael seems to be made of._

_Nicholas looks at him, leaning to large hands cradling his face lovingly. He’s yearning to have this, to understand this, but what he yearns for more is to keep him, as this, as his, as his Sun. His only. No one’s to hurt, no one’s to seek help from, or guidance with. No one else’s but his._

_“But I don’t want them to have you. Anda adalah matahari saya,” Nick’s hands go to Raphael’s face now, mirroring the loving gesture. Tracing carved in warm gold features with adoration an devotion he should have for his service to the Lord. But he hasn’t. He only has it for Raphael. “I don’t know how to be an angel of the Lord. I don’t think I want to be.”_

_“Not true. The children adore you. You shine for them like a beacon of hope. And you shine for us like estrella.”_

_Nicholas brings himself closer with the flutter of his wings. “No. Not for them, matahari. For you,” Nicholas’s hands draw patterns on Raphael’s chest and anywhere they can reach as he continues. “Have you ever thought of a human life. And us sharing one. Giving these children home, showing them the way, fishing, playing sports, being a family. How does it feel? What’s it like to live with someone? And to die with someone?” his words are now breaths of cosmic dust on Raphael’s face. “How would your skin feel on mine when I hug you then? How would your lips feel on mine, matahari?”_

_They are not exactly physical. They don’t feel like humans do. It’s all fleeting and feathery. Nor really corporeal but Nicholas longs, needs, wonders. Nicholas knows nothing keeps him here in this place, but his devotion to Raphael. But his want and love for Raphael._

_“We are the servants of the Lord, estrella. And we are here to do only his will,” Raphael delicately brings distance between them, his wings bristling in confusion or defense or both, feeling like a slap of that whip of human prayers assaulting them felt before. Nicholas turns his cheek like he’s taking it. Accepting it. Knowing this is how it always was and this is how it will always be. Raphael is the sun. Nothing reaches the sun to stay in its orbit and survive._

_“No. Not /we/, Raphael. You are.”_

Nicholas opens his eyes to Raphael’s face peering into him with shame, worry and care. This was then. This is now. But this time it’s him pulling himself away from the closeness of Raphael’s light and the warm gold of his wings. His own wings are only scars aching on his back. His own light distant memory he used to consider to be a dream. Maybe it always was. Because he was never meant to be an angel. He was never meant to have this sun in his life either.

“What happened?” he still asks. He demands. There are scars on his body but no memories of the story they tell.

“I failed. I failed you, estrella.”

“Don’t call me that. What happened?” he insists.

“It is not my story to tell. If your soul keeps it away from you, it is your will I can’t take from you. It is your choice to make,” stoic and unshaken, as always.

“Oh, so now you’re letting me make my choice instead of making it for _us_ ,” he spits the last word like a curse, like something wretched. For it to hurt Raphael. Like a slap, like a whip. “And I don’t have a soul anymore.” And Nick is leaving. Even if his body wants to stay still. Aches for the familiar, for this warm, golden matter to fill him up, that cold void inside him that left him with only scars on his skin and cold darkness.

*

And so life returns to this cold and dark normalcy. Nicholas fails at various attempt of being a convincing demon, pretending the memories in his head that resurface every night are dreams or nightmares or both and pretending the scars on his back and the marking on his arm (it’s been becoming more and more visible, he thinks he sees feathers there and he thinks he doesn’t want to know more) are just this – scars, and not reminders, not whole stories to share. Nick also acts like he doesn’t know any angels by the name Raphael or otherwise and he needs to stop himself from going to the same places during his daily demonic temptation routines, because, as it turns out he used to spend awfully lot of time by the churches and cemeteries and maybe other holy places, in hope of meeting said angel he knows nothing of now, thank you very much.

And then he wakes up in some dingy basement, he can’t see, his physical form feels heavy and clumsy and his senses dull and ringing with confusion. There are voices, too. Echoing from a bit of a distance, but within the same space he’s in.

“Of course he will fucking come. They both act like lovesick puppies around each other. Honestly, there’s no accounting for a taste, but fuck me sideways, if we had a gossip press, can you imagine how much money they would pay for this bit of news?” a voice sounds very cliché. Like a dude is drinking too much, there might be a touch of Russian accent too and mostly so very stereotypically obvious ill intensions in a way he’s drawling words. He’s chewing something, too. And this whole place smells of chicken wings and hot chili sauce, so the cliché apparently knows no bounds.

“We just need to ruffle him up a bit, yeah? But like he’s pretty powerful, do you think the drug will work to keep him in check, like, fuck, I don’t wanna face his wrath. Everyone says his screw is lose and when a screw is lose with demons, it’s double trouble,” the other voice sounds squeaky and twitchy and maybe even hysterical and Nicholas is coming round more and more wondering what kind of absolute pair of idiots he found himself at the mercy of. Pardon his French but jesus christ.

“Like you do realise we have a one hell of a pissed off archangel coming here on the agenda mostly and it ain’t gonna be to watch Gilmore Girls on demand with us, A. And here you are squeaking over this bag of dicks?” the Russian voice comments sarcastically, but there’s also acceptance and resignation about him.

“It’s gonna be quick and clean, though. With this one it would be messy as fuck, D” the other one is scared and unsure, but there’s certain kind of loyalty driving him. Maybe to the cause, maybe to the one called D.

“Think again. I promise you it’s not quick and clean with this much personal involvement at stake.”

“But like in love? Goddamn. Is this a young adults novel with the most cheesy plot ever? Or are we actually doing our job and being professionals here?”

“I think it’s both. Anyway our sleeping beauty’s awaken. Hi, болван, are you comfortable?” Nicholas groans and tries to stand up, but it’s difficult. It’s like he’s bound, even though he’s not. It’s like his body is no longer his own but filled with stones, heavy and awkward, pinned to the ground. With huge effort he manages to get himself on his knees to register the surrounding.

Because we are in a very cliché reality Nicholas finds himself in a dilapidated basement, filled with dim light and dust and a clutter and two unfamiliar dudes swaying on the chairs, sharpening their knives and looking like they would prefer to be playing a round of Call of Duty instead of conducting this very important mission right now.

No. Not just dudes. Low ranking demons, reeking of fear and overcompensating ego. A dangerous combination. Nicholas tastes ashes on his tongue. Like something imminent is about to happen. A milestone that will bury them all into unrecoverable twilight or unrecognizable dawn. (Okay? But what does it mean?).

“Can you guys order a pizza or something. This place almost looks like a party, except it’s mostly fucking tacky and pathetic as fuck,” he feels like he’s made of concrete as he moves his hands to brush dust, sand and mud off his clothes, to check how much damaged have already been done and how much more he will be able to take. He’s not hurt. Not yet. But he’s standing in the middle of pentagram dripping with blood and sizzling with fire to make the whole picture as cliché as possible. “Seriously? You really need to redecorate, my dudes, Bruce Willis’ 90s action films are less predictable than that.”

“They warned us you’re a mouthful. No worries, we’re gonna shut this pretty mouth soon enough. Well, counting out screaming,” one of the guys, wearing a tracksuit as if he dropped his tennis training session for this stops swaying on a chair and throws Nick a sleazy look.

“Not enough of a Russian accent, mate. You’re almost there with peak cliché, though,” Nicholas is mouthful when he’s scared. Nicholas is mouthful when he’s insecure or helpless, too. The taste of ashes on his tongue is not about him being trapped within the pressing pentagram that feels like bounds on his body making it feel painful and heavy. The ashes in his mouth taste like some terrible déjà vu. Like the Fates has just woven his string onto the tapestry of the same mistakes. As if the string was about to be cut, too.

“Hey, that’s russophobic, man!” 

“Ask me if I give a motherfuck?” Nick does give more than a motherfuck, trying to summon his powers, trying to awaken the fire inside, that’s anchoring, that’s safe, that’s reassuring. But there’s nothing. He feels the void inside him, terrifying, absolutely empty void. Not that familiar emptiness he recognizes as full of shape awareness. That there’s something missing. That there’s someone missing. Now the void has nothing for him. Fuck.

“Also Mel Gibson’s action films rock, man!” the other guy emerges from the shadows, where he was sharpening a knife. His eyes flash yellow. Like a hungry wolf. There’s palpable craving in the air. For blood. For violence. Full of intent. Or a promise for blood to be spilled.

“Mel Gibson is what’s wrong with male Hollywood film industry, like, catch up on social awareness Mr Gorbachev,” the feeling of void inside him and the sense of foreboding, like he knows the situation, like he was a part of the situation before, like there’s an avalanche of memories inside him bursting to be unlocked, makes him run his mouth in fear even more.

“You’re both wrong and the ultimate king of action films is Samuel L Jackson, now time to shut this one up and test his endurance, partner. Do the honours.”

Nicholas wonders for a moment what these two douchebags can even do to him, considering he’s trapped inside a powerful pentagram that influences all the demonic creature, including these thugs too. He doesn’t wonder for a long, though.

The one that calls himself “D” raises himself up from a chair to reach for the very thick and dusted book that looks surprisingly close to being The Holy Scripture and the other one playing with the knife puts on rubber gloves and goes to the corner of the room for a pair of buckets with something. Okay, this looks very cliché but pretty ominous, too and Nicholas is not a particularly happy camper about it. But, like hell he’s going to show it.

“Can you be more cliché, guys?” and no, his voice doesn’t sound hoarse and small. And if it does, it’s because he’s been lying here unconscious for a while.

“Can you be more annoying, dude?” the one with the buckets, hisses, as if the containers are hot and Nicholas can smell the inside of them. Of course they are cliché and of course it’s holy water. And of course he’s being an inseparable part of this tropey storytelling thus he’s very much not immune to it t all. Fuck this noise. “Maestro?” then he indicates at the other one with a pompous gesture to start whatever contribution he has planned and so it begins.

A very long night. A very long week. A very long month. Nichols loses track very quickly. Nicholas almost loses his entire self there.

First, they do exorcisms on him. Nicholas doesn’t understand how they can speak the words without being burnt themselves, he doesn’t have energy to think about it. It hurts. It hurts this black, empty space inside him where his soul used to be. It hurts under his skin, brings back flashes of dreams or memories that feel like someone carving chapters of the story on his skin.

 _Let. Them. Go._ Through the grunts and groans of pain he hears his own voice in his head. Powerful. Threatening. Full of ill intent. Like he wasn’t capable of conjuring up for a long time now. He sounds menacing. He sounds invincible. He sounds like he might be damning himself.

_“Or what you gonna do, boy?”_

_“I’m not a boy.”_

_“You look like one.”_

_“I’m not.”_

_“What are you?”_

_“I’m the last thing you will know and see on this Earth.”_

This was then. He hears the voice. He doesn’t see the images. Not yet. He’s on the floor, sizzling, hurting, trying not to scream to not give them satisfaction. The ground is wet but it feels sizzling hot to him and the words assaulting him from the outside bring whips like flames too.

_God arises; His enemies are scattered and those who hate Him flee before Him. As smoke is driven away, so are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God._

He feels like his skin is cracking and the void inside him swallows his entire conscious existence. He reaches with his remaining self for some remnants of hope, of good, of safe, of liberating. He finds the one word, one word only inside him that brings all of this.

Raphael.

_“I think it’s a stardust, estrella. I think you really came to us from the stars. And I think we can’t keep you.”_

_Raphael is touching the yellow streak of hair on his head, tenderly, lovingly. Nicholas taught him that. Nicholas was always tactile with him. Nicholas always meant something else than Raphael does now. With his protectiveness of a guide, and protection of a guardian. Nicholas still gives in to the touch, like a wisp of breeze, a kiss of sunray. A blessing. Home. Everything. He leans to the touch and hums and Raphael whispers more words to his head that sound like prayers but for what? For Nicholas’ soul? For keeping him there? For their bleak future? But I’m not going anywhere. Wherever you are I am too. Nicholas wants to say. Raphael whispers. “Mi estrella, mi cariño, mi corazón.”_

_So maybe he does understand. Maybe he does mean the same when he touches him like not something sacred, but physical and his._

_Raphael._

Nicholas is filled with this sound, with this name, with the feeling of him, subconsciously reaching for this semblance of serenity, of safe, of known. Even though they are no longer connected. Even though he’s cursed and paying for it now and Raphael is bright, pure, the sun on the sky unreachable.

“Are you calling for him, you dumbass? All according to the plan,” the voice with heavy Russian accent breaks through the fog of memories and pain. He remembers where he is. Writhing on a boiling hot surface, burned alive with words and the holy presence. The words echo with something he thinks he heard before, too.

_“All according to plan. What will you do to us, boy? Will you be quick enough before we carve these pretty babies into pieces?”_

_“I told you, I’m not a boy.”_

“Plan? What plan?” Nicholas doesn’t recognize his own voice. He sounds weak and pathetic. His body is pierced with needles of burning sensations. Even if the exorcisms stops, it’s like words running under his skin to tear him to pieces, now. _In the Name and by the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ, may you be snatched away and driven from the Church of God and from the souls made to the image and likeness of God._

He felt it before. This unbearable separation. Not from his divine form, not even from the wings attached to his very soul.

But from him.

“Just like then, just like before, you are a blind idiot and we’re gonna pick you apart, pick the Big Boss’ army apart that easy thanks to the likes of you.”

There are images in his head like puzzles split into pieces that should make up a whole but they don’t. Not yet. He tries to cling to the feeling of warmth inside him, the echo of Him, that name bringing safety and familiarity but his captors go back again to the words cutting him into pieces, to the holy water purging his black, black gauge where his soul was from all the sin and it seems to be made of nothing but sin.

He doesn’t know how long it takes. It feels forever. He thinks he whimpers, no longer words, just sounds of desperation. He’s weak. He’s pathetic. He’s a blackness of a void.

“Let. Him. Go,” he senses, rather than hears on a 3rd 6th 15th day? His skin becomes physical again, there’s current of electricity coming through him as if the very thunder itself came down from the sky, became corporeal to make all things around tremble, shudder and melt in awe and fear. It doesn’t sound like voice. It sounds like a storm growling on the horizon, gathering to rumble through the earth with its merciless abandon. It feels like the moments before the sky cracks open with the lighting and the cacophony of unanapologetic destruction follows. It tastes like wildfire burning everything on its way to dust.

The voice is terror, awe, violence and justice.

“You will not touch him again,” the sky continues to rumble with sensations rather than words. Nicholas lies on the ground, numb and hurting, wrapped in darkness. He senses the presence of larger than cosmos creature of infinite, rather than sees it. At least not with his eyes. But underneath the sensations there’s familiarity and warmth. There’s recognizable trace of something known. Of everything that matters.

_Raphael._

Before the physical reassurance comes Nicholas thinks he can hear it somewhere inside that black hole where his soul has been purged over and over again. The beloved voice that will always guide him home.

_I’m here. I’m here, estrella._

Like before. Like then. The puzzles start to come together now. He remembers.

_I’m here. I’m here, estrella. I’m so sorry._

_The rituals always fascinated mankind. They felt worthless. Lesser. They aspired to be more than mortal ants on the field of wasted hopes and opportunities. The mankind has always been driven by this primal vanity to become like God meant for them to be. His likeness. God is just. God is merciful. But God is powerful, unstoppable, infinite and immortal. Mankind never settled with what they got from their Holy Father. Mankind never understood the grace of free will. The choice to make. They violated it over and over again chasing after the impossible. Fueled by their pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony._

_Nicholas doesn’t think about which one of those has driven the men to the acts they committed. Nicholas doesn’t care Nicholas knows only one thing. In the rituals of men pursuing their impossible glory it’s the innocence of children that is the sacrifice. It’s the innocence of children that is the price to pay. He learns about the gang of men kidnapping children to bleed them dry in their chase after fame? Immortality? Grandeur? from the media room in their Headquarters where they often listen to life passing by in turbulences for the human kind._

_Never interfere. Just guide. Just whisper to them about hope and faith. Nicholas tries. Clings to that steel will Raphael taught him to conjure up inside himself. Tries to make him proud. Tries to teach himself and be proud too._

_Not this time._

_In the words he hears he feels this primal fear of hopelessness and vulnerability only children can have and he lets the holy fire of righteous justice guide him straight to the source of vile corruption._

_“We’ve heard about you, boy,” they continue to taunt him. Nick doesn’t see their faces. They are shapeless ugly blotches of black and slimy. Nick sees children huddled together like little lambs for sacrifice, beacons of pleading hearts and fragile souls. Nick brims with heat, his skin feels like cracking already, primal growl inside his belly like a volcano before eruption._

_“A little avenging angel, always going against the codex, always saving little souls, never following the rules. This is all for you. Call it a housewarming party. You are coming home now, boy. Strip your angelic pretences, like it was meant to be.”_

Nick is floating, weightless, soulless, abandoned, condemned. Between then and now. He hears the mocking Russian voice echoing the words from then.

“We’ve heard about you. Invincible archangel caving in for some boy. Caving in for a filthy demon. Will you cave in for him now, too? This is all for you. An encouragement to show your true colours. Are you archangel or are you demon’s whore?”

_“You really shouldn’t have done that,” Nick’s voice then sounds like it’s coming from the very depths of the Earth. His wings flutter like the sails do in the open ocean, ready to take on speed, ready to become weapons or shields or both. _

_“Yes, we should. It has been written. And it shall be done, now. In the name of the Holy War,” the shapeless, nameless sleazy darkness laments the words in disturbing worship but the fire inside Nicholas burns too bright, too hot for him to hear and understand the meaning. The understanding with repercussions come next._

“I don’t answer to you. I don’t explain myself to you. I don’t confess to you. Do you repent? Do you ask for mercy?” the rumble on the sky, now, encompasses the entire place. It’s terrifying. It’s booming. It’s a destructive force of nature. And yet inside Nicholas it makes the warm bubble of safety expand and cocoon him with healing and soothing sensations. Like he knows himself again. Like he’s physical again. No longer a black void of nothing.

_Nicholas moves to huddled up, crying children, while he can keep the righteous flame inside him tame, while he still resembles something human. They’ve seen enough. They’ve been through enough. His voice is coated with encouragement and faith as he creates the protective layer with the move on his hand keeping them away from the sounds, the smells, the horror that are about to unfold, now. “Hush, I’m here. It’s going to be all right now. Just close your eyes and think of home. You’re coming home.”_

_And then he faces the men almost eagerly waiting for him with open arms. Pose worshipping, like they embrace baptism. Like they wait for their salvation. Nick feels a bile of disgust fuel the fire inside him burning brighter and brighter. He still asks. As it is required, as his service expects him to. “Do you repent? Do you ask for mercy?” Even though it doesn’t apply. Even though they are humans. They are supposed to bow down to. They are supposed to trust and believe in._

He’s still blind to the world, pain the only sharp sensation inside him that grounds him to his physicality. He no longer feels freezing void inside. There’s familiar presence there instead. And now on the outside, too. The voice close to him, a warm whisper in his ear, follows a familiar touch of large hands like safe haven he leans to, instantly. Like his first instinct is to give himself in to these hands. That will deliver him. That will keep him whole. That will bring home to him. The whispers in his ear take shape. “Hush, I’m here. It’s going to be all right now. Just think of home now. You’re coming home, estrella.”

He believes he does. He believes he has home. He believes he maybe always had one. With him. Like this.

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” Raphael adds. And it’s poignant. He doesn’t talk about being here. Holding Nick close, with his hands, with his arms, with his wings. He talks about them, stars on each other’s orbits, always missing each other, the sun and the moon and the distance between them. That should never be. Now he knows. Now they both do. Now it’s too late?

It’s like rays of sun breaking through thick, cold fog. And Nicholas remembers sight and Nicholas knows himself and the world around him. And Nicholas sees.

Raphael has become a flaming sword of righteous justice. He’s golden like molten lava, he’s terrifying like a sun storm. He fills up the entire space with his body towering almost monstrous, shimmering like the sky does set on fire by summer sunset. His wings are licked by flames like they are alive on their own. They tell you Heavens are merciful and white and pure and good and gentle. Heavens can be wrathful, too. Unforgiving. The eye of the storm. 

When they protect, when they deliver justice. When they love.

“For an angel of the lord you are really, really predictable. We don’t repent. We only rejoice. It happened before. You already lost one of yours. You will lose many more. And now, we are going to take you away from them. All because you’re weak. All because you’re blind. All because you love what you shouldn’t,” the Russian accent thick in their voices as they continue their almost adoring vocalizing. A ritual begins. A ritual they know by heart. A ritual they were created for. The only purpose they exist.

Nick scrambles for weak memories inside his head, covered in ashes, ripped into pieces _. It already happened? You already lost one of yours?_ There’s a warning building inside him, filling him up with old strength, filling up that void of nothingness inside him. With Raphael’s one touch he’s slowly rebuilding himself. He’s slowly becoming. A warning or a memory or both making him stronger. For him. To save him. To protect him. There’s a small, timid, but expanding “no” trapped in his throat. ( _No. This is what they want. This is how they steal us. This is how they kill us. This is how they destroy us._ )

“No, please…” he hears himself pleading. Knowing. What will happen. What happened before. Knowing what sacrifice Raphael is making.

Raphael turns to him, aura of vicious flames softens and makes him look like he’s glowing. Like he always did for Nicholas. So that Nicholas could always find him. So that Nicholas could always find home. He puts his finger on his lips in a shushing motion. Gentle gesture of _trust me, let me and don’t be afraid_. And then he paints copula of that safety he gives Nicholas with just his presence with his hands, sheltering him, keeping him away, preventing him from interfering.

_This is my fight. This is my choice._

And he becomes vengeance personified.

And he signs verdict on himself.

Just like Nicholas did before.

Nick can’t look away. Terror in beauty. That’s what Raphael always was. No. Not true. That’s what archangel Raphael always was. Nicholas knows him as warm, safe, playful and home. What he’s seeing now is archangel Raphael’s swan song.

_No. Please. Don’t._

Nick remembers seeing Raphael before, in that room of broken prayers, helpless pleas, desperate yearnings and angry accusations. He remembers him brave and strong, taking all of this onto himself. Standing in his majestic glory, even though he should crumble, begging them to stop. Nick remembers the raw power fueled by the biggest heart there. Nick remembers staring into the sun, into the very core of it and never wanting to look away. Even if it hurts. Knowing what he does. Knowing what he sacrifices.

Does he know what he’s sacrificing? Is he doing it willingly? Is he making a choice? For Nick?

 _Please. No._ He tries to scream but the strength hasn’t returned to him and Raphael keeps him away from the fight. It’s his choice. His alone. He remembers making the same one. He remembers Raphael calling his name inside. But he is blind to everything but this wrathful justice he’s delivering now.

_Estrella, no. No._

_He’s on fire and doesn’t let anything or anyone escape his rage. He feels infinite. Larger than the sky and the feeling is intoxicating. Raw power. He could be everything. He could do everything. Maybe that’s why the rules were created. To stop them from suppressing even God._

_Humans fall like flies as he barely moves his hand like a conductor of the symphony of death. They are smiling manically, with last words stuck on their mouth with that feverish glee. “In the name of the Holy War, be damned.” Maybe this is what their words sound like. Nicholas doesn’t here. Nicholas ascends becoming fury personified and he conducts his fate with sharp cuts of the strings. Humans die easily, like their life was always meaningless. Small. Ashes. From dust you came and to dust you shall return. He doesn’t hear Raphael’s voice inside him, either. Beseeching. Pleading. He’s consumed by the holy anger that feels like righteous duty. There is no room for anything else._

_“We are guides to lead the way. We are soldiers to protect. But to have all that power and not use it is all the proof of faith, courage and dedication.”_

_Raphael used to say. It might echo somewhere inside Nicholas. But there’s perfect silence inside his head now as he sets the world around him on fire, purging it from all sin, and he never felt braver and more dedicated to service._

Nicholas remembers. He knows now. With every strike his skin felt like whipped then, the feathers from his wings started to scatter into the air, as they were ripped one by one by blasphemy of his doing. He was so drunk on this anger he didn’t even feel it. Raphael is more methodical now. There’s no feverish obsession to him the way it was to Nicholas back then. There’s commitment he always had when listening to the prayers, when nudging people on their way, when explaining the scripture to Nicholas. There’s the very same commitment to him now. Like saving Nicholas is the very purpose of his existence and he’s never known anything else. Even though his skin cracks and his stunning, golden wings tear into single feathers that turn into dust that falls to the ground like stars would from the sky.

The demons disappear into nothing with the same gleeful message they left Nicholas with before. Like it was all planned. Like they are pieces on board to be overplayed and defeated. Angels always fought their wars with demons but the battlefield was not about blows of the weapons, about painting the borders with blood or counting those perished. It was about whispers and convictions with humans in the middle making their choices, following their free will anyway.

Now, Raphael makes it about blood, death and inevitable. As Nick did before.

_“What have you done, estrella?” Raphael stands among the ashes left behind as the fire on Nicholas’ skin shimmers down, leaving him aching, leaving him feeling raw with all the repercussions of his doing. He falls to his knees, overwhelmed by pain. Feathers and ash fall slowly, silently around him because the world does go on with the children, silent witness of his undoing._

_The arms around him hurt him, too. Like he no longer deserves them. Like he never really did. The arms and wings that used to shelter him and were home now make the skin on him jerk and shudder in denial. “What have you done, mi estrella?” Raphael holds him as he crumbles on the floor, holds him like Nick is his heart. Like Nick is the most precious._

_But he’s not. He’s never been. He was doomed from the very beginning._

_“I’ve made my choice, matahari. I was never good at this. I was terrible at this. You know that. There is only one sun on the sky and it’s you. It’s always been you,” Nick tries to touch Raphael’s face but his whole body hurts and feels like it’s becoming stone. Heavy with his doing. Heavy with his sin and damnation. The confession sounds like something more. Not only paying tribute to Raphael’s unshakeable, incorruptible faith. Like nothing mattered more to Nicholas but Raphael being his sun._

_“No. No. No. Estrella. Don’t you know?_ _Dará tal esplandor al firmamento que el mundo enamorado de la noche se olvidará del sol y de su fuego,[He will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun],” Raphael murmurs, like a chant, like a prayer, for Nick. It’s too late. It’s too late for him. There’s an echo of his mouth on Nick’s forehead, too. But how? How does he feel it? How does he know the sensation? His divinity’s bleeding out of him (he butchered it), his grace is disappearing (he killed it). What remains is raw physicality. Now he knows. Now he feels. Now he is ripped away from it. The last thing he remembers is that mouth, he now knows the touch of, pleading and kissing. “I’m sorry I didn’t know. I’m sorry I didn’t see.”_

_And then comes brutal reality check. When he opens his eyes and sees Novak’s greengoldbluebrown gaze piercing through him with creepy intensity. “Look what the cat’s dragged in. Another loser to join our merry band. Pull yourself together, boy, you’re embarrassing us,” there’s a helping hand, nevertheless, lifting him up, with care and a sense of pity. No. Not pity. Understanding._

_“Such fine establishment we are, sure, Novak,” another voice joins in and Nicholas struggles to turn around and see, still sore, still feeling like a missing piece of a whole, cut in all the wrong edges._

_And then he sees a man shimmering with a glow on his skin. The luminosity around him hits him with a blunt recognition. Like a whip. Of pain. Of loss. Of self-destruction. He jerks away from the stranger. To which the man speaks in a soothing manner like to a wild creature._

_“Hey, calm down, kiddo. We’re gonna patch you up and you’re going to probably wish we didn’t but, tough, you’re stuck with us,” and there’s another hand supporting him, leading him to a place with neon sign in the most tacky pinkish colours, with half of the letters not working._

_He can read one word, though._

_Fallen._

_And it pierces him with recognition. With a flash of known among the impenetrable darkness of his mind and inside broken shell of his body._

_“What are you, anyway?” the man with piercing undefined colour eyes asks._

_“Geez, man, subtle as always?” the glowing one comments._

_“Who cares, Roger? There are no media here. You can literally chill.”_

_“Great. Puns by you are always fun.”_

_Nicholas moves with them towards the grimy, unwelcoming place, aching and confused. Their banters increases the white noise inside his head. He wonders if he still has a voice. If he still knows how to use it._

_“Cool hair, kid. Looks like you caught stardust in it.”_

_Nicholas stops and touches the top of his head, trying to know, trying to remember. He thinks it feels warm to the touch. Luminous warm. Beautiful warm. Familiar warm. There’s a feeling of emptiness inside him taking shape that will never leave him now. Cold void. Skin on his forearm itches, too. A blotch of unrecognisable shapes._

_“Maybe we should speak Latin to him?” the man called Novak suggests to Roger snorting and Nick finally using his voice._

_“Fuck. Can I unsubscribe from this place?” he sounds hoarse. Like he’s been remade, maybe._

_“Already? Wait till you see the inside of it,” Novak chuckles._

_“Can’t wait,” Nick grunts back._

_“How much do you remember, kiddo?” Roger prompts, with that sympathetic face that looks like pity and feels like it and Nick feels hot and angry inside. He doesn’t want anyone’s pity. He doesn’t want to be here, at all. He belongs somewhere else. Or does he?_

_“Nada. Null. Zero,” there are sensations, aches and that luminous warmth he longs after. And that void that has a shape and a weight inside him._

_“Maybe, that’s for better for now. In the meantime, let’s get you a drink. Novak’s buying,” Roger leads the way to Novak mumbling series of words in another language. “Možete piti piće pravo do dupeta.”_

_Nicholas really wants to unsubscribe but for a long while they are the only ones he will have left._

This was then.

This is now.

Raphael is now standing in the pile of ashes, of sinful creatures he delivered to justice but of his own grace crumbling into the ground. His skin looks like a ground of a desert whipped with merciless rays of a sun. Spotless, golden, stunning skin, punished like that. Ripped like that. He has no more physical strength, from this majestic storm of righteous rage, he caves in, broken and weak. Stolen from himself. He falls to his knees and Nick whimpers and follows. The image so ungraspable it pains him more than his still recovering body does. It’s like they regained this connection from before, when the one could recognise the presence of the other over miles, where the one wasn’t sure where he ended and the other began. Nick feels the burning punishment, too. Because it’s his guilt to carry, too.

Raphael lies face flat on the ground, the ashes with feathers falling almost softly, like gentle snow covering the earth after disaster, hiding the bleeding wounds of it, as if carnage didn’t happen, as if the world doesn’t stop to mourn. 

Nick crawls to him, the magic of a prison holding him in stopped working the moment Raphael vanished the demons. So Nick moves. On his knees, on his hands, like paying Raphael tribute, too. Like falling, caving in, too. Feeling all his pain. Shame. Guilt. His voice sounds hoarse, like coming from within the ground, where he feels buried, where he hides or lies dying. “Raphael.”

The sound that means everything. The sound that encompasses the entire world. “Raphael.” And he’s by his side, he’s reaching for him, like for something precious, made of porcelain. Even if Raphael has always been made of gold, a monument, unbreakable, Nick feels his eyes burning, even though he forgot how to cry, even if he doesn’t know anymore what tears are. Raphael’s body is warm to the touch, and heavy but it also feels drained, utterly drained, like the sacrifice he’s made is on the inside of him, where the void after his grace now is. It feels like handling a rag doll and Nick now feels burning sensation in his throat, choking him, he tries to stifle it but it still comes out like a sob breaking on this name. “Please.” He cradles this beloved body, gently holds onto it on his lap, leaning, bowing (paying tribute, saying sorry) to touch Raphael’s forehead with his own. To plead for him to open his eyes, to heal, to come back to him.

“What have you done, what have you done, what have you done?” he mumbles on and on in a broken voice, to his forehead, his mouth on Raphael’s skin as the ash and feathers fall soft and silent around them. Like the world did stop for them to mourn.

Raphael opens his eyes and smiles, like the last ray of sun disappearing under the horizon, but it’s stunning, it’s beautiful, because it’s final and fleeting, last echo of that glory. Nick feels wetness on his face now, falling with ash, falling with feathers. He’s still bent, with their foreheads touching and his mouth on Raphael’s skin asking soundless. “Why?” 

There’s Raphael’s hand tracing Nick’s cheek, catching the tears falling onto his finger, his smile growing brighter with affection, with fondness, with love. “It’s wet. It’s warm,” and then he pulls him closer to taste them with his lips. “And salty. And they write about it. And they sing about it. And they can’t live without it.” Raphael is now stroking Nick’s hair to soothe him, to ground him, to show him.

“What is?”

“Love is, estrella,” a chuckle, even if sounding weary, even if mingled with hiss of pain. Raphael’s back is an open wound, a void of loss, scar of a sacrifice, that will never leave him now. He’s like Nick now. A chapter of their life together written on their skin like that.

“I’m a demon. I don’t understand love.”

“Of course you are,” the chuckle grows and Raphael now peers into Nicholas’ eyes with conviction, like declaring his faith. Like he’s found it all over again. “That’s why I did it, estrella. To feel you. To live with you. To die with you,” the echo of Nick’s words from before.

Nicholas’ snort sounds more like a sob as he shakes his head leaning onto Raphael’s in desperation, in denial in despair. “Did you have to be so extra about it?”

“Sorry, but that’s our brand’s MO and also look who’s talking.”

“Shut up and kiss me,” Nick sounds small and needy, cradling this beloved face, touching every inch of it to learn it by heart now that they can both feel each other like this, so deep.

And Raphael pulls Nick closer with the palm on his nape and kisses him, upside down. Brushes their lips in a tender promise of what could have been? Of what will never be now? And as always with everything, Nicholas seeks more, impulsively, right now. He deepens the kiss, drinking every lost chances from Raphael’s mouth greedily, memorizing the texture of it, every shudder, every taste, every sigh coming from his throat and the whisper of a tongue meeting his, setting him on fire, making him want, want, want so much.

He never wants this to stop. Even when Raphael’s pulls slightly away to breathe (now he needs to, now he’s becoming fragile and mortal with every second, grace traded for sensations) Nick’s mouth chases the taste, trailing Raphael’s cheek, his nose, his neck, like putting the pieces back together. Until he returns back to the mouth, parted and warm, as if waiting for Nick. And they are kissing again. And Nick thinks he remembers what’s it like to have your breath knocked out of your lungs, as he chuckles now, eyes closed, foreheads nuzzling. “Angels don’t kiss like that.”

“Oh yes they fucking do,” Raphael smirks and Nick stares at his lips, glistening, marked with him, marked with his taste now and holds him close, clings to him, to never let him go. Now, when they finally have a chance. Now they can finally try.

Then, he laughs to Raphael’s neck. “Did you just quote Bridget Jones to me?”

“What’s a Bridget Jones?” Raphael peers into Nick’s face with almost child-like confusion and all Nick wants is to go back to kissing him and kissing him some more.

“First of all, how dare you? Second of all, how dare you?” Nick mocks offense, nuzzling Raphael’s hair and then staying silent, with their foreheads still touching. His eyes are closed and he’s savouring, the moment, the closeness, the world pausing for them, sheltering them in this impossible what if. He hums, maybe a lullaby, to part with a chance, to say goodbye to their maybe, someday, forever. “We will never watch it together. And it’s a masterpiece. It’s too late and we have just started, Raphael.”

More silence, with eyes closed, to hide tears swelling, to escape the inevitable. For just one moment. To have him like that. To be with him like that. “Stay. Please. Stay,” Nicholas is murmuring, beseeching, until the words blend into one litany of breaths on Raphael’s face.

“Hush, estrella. Have faith in us,” Raphael responds with his own warm whisper and then time rewinds, the Moirae weave their strings, the Moirae cut their strings and the destiny is fulfilled.

@

And Nicholas opens his eyes to endless whiteness, his arms empty and hollow, with Raphael gone and the void inside him violently threatening to consume him.

He’s standing in the middle of an empty space that looks like the very essence of a clean slate. You know, the very same white room you always see in the popular media that is supposed to serve as slapping in the face metaphor of purgatory and by extension clean slate if you’re lucky. Nicholas doesn’t feel lucky. His arms are empty and he aches to have and to keep and to be full of Raphael again. Always.

To make things even more full-on cliché he sees a silhouette approaching slowly, awkwardly, its movement supported by a cane. As they hobble closer Nicholas recognizes that kind but playful face with watery, blue, oldest eyes looking with peace and sympathy and sharp curiosity and honestly who else it could be if not the Big Boss. The trope of a mentor delivering his final message alternatively the tube for the fate having its say.

“Where is he?” Nicholas braces himself for the riddles that always follow with the Big Boss in general and with these closure scenes always. But there’s nothing else inside him that he wants to know more. Nothing else that matters more.

“He told you. He made his choice and so he’s living it now,” the Boss halts, facing Nick, with patient focus on his face.

“I’ve made mine, too. Why am I not with him then?” he sounds whiny and demanding. He sounds like he hasn’t learned his lesson. He knows it and it only gets confirmed by the Boss’ sympathetic chuckle and stoic statement that follows his tantrum.

“Yes, Nicholas. You did make your choice and you’re exactly where you are supposed to be.”

“I need to be with him. I need to protect him. I need to ….” Nick starts pacing, feeling claustrophobic, even if this place is an endless white space of infinite possibilities. Or maybe because of that.

“Raphael can take care of himself all right, Nicholas, and what you need to do is answer some questions to yourself, son.”

“I am not your son,” Nicholas throws at him an accusatory and angry grunt. His eyes flashing amber fire.

“You used to be.”

“Why did you even choose me?”

“I didn’t choose you. You are stars favourite. Where else could you be?” He says melancholy, with sadness, like somehow losing Nicholas affected Him, too.

“Then why did you put us together?” Nick stops and asks, no longer an offended, frustrated child. But quietly pleading like people often do when they pray.

“Do you regret it?”

“No,” Nick instantly replies, there’s a gasp in his throat of being shocked someone could ever assume that. His first instinct. “But it came to nothing but this mess. He sacrificed his grace for me. He’s a mortal now. He’s going to die. He can get sick. He feels pain. He can be hurt. And he will die. One day, he will die,” Nick is mumbling to himself, as the feeling of suffocation returns with full force. The ache inside him to have his arms full of Raphael is now the very essence of cold, slimy fear. Terror, even.

“Oh. Something new. Could you be thinking about someone else but yourself, Nicholas?” the Boss has that unreadable kind expression that is so very cliché and reminds Nick of every popular media mentor face. He feels like exploding, gasping on anger.

“What the fuck?” is all he manages to choke out.

“Why did you kill those men, Nicholas?”

Nick growls, hostile and confused. “Did you mean why did I save those children?”

“You heard me the first time. What were you thinking about when they burned under your hands?”

“That I’m saving lives,” Nick sounds firm, even if he clenches his palms , with fire shimmering under his skin defensively.

“Afterwards, you told it to yourself when you remembered, but when they were dying in your hands, you felt about the control it gave you, the power you had.”

“That’s not true!” his voice now breaks in hoarse defiance and fire inside him lashes out protectively like a suit of armour.

“You were not in control, Nicholas. They were. They belonged to a network of terrorists that has been sabotaging Heaven since the times of the first crusades. Provoking angels to sacrifice their grace out of various reasons. Sometimes mere citizen, sometimes knights, children, women, men alike, striking their deals with demons, if demons did not do the job themselves, like they did with Raphael. So think back to it and tell me what were your reasons?” the Boss is undeterred as always, even if his face betrays nothing but empathy of the elderly man caring, providing and enlightening. But he’s fierce and relentless. Always was. That’s why they often called him the Rocket in the corridors.

Nicholas is glimmering, the flames tame, close to his skin, ready to strike to guard him. But not now. Not yet. He breathes in and breathes out. Still clinging to denial. “To save innocent lives.”

“When Raphael heard you’re in pain, or should I say, sensed you, before they even laid their hands on you, before you even called out his name, he kept his focus. His calm. His absolute. Never in his entire service did he think of breaking the laws, of interfering, of abusing the power you have. Never before did he think of coming down there to stay. The first time was when you fell, but I pleaded, I was selfish, I said he can guard you better as my angel still. And then there was no stopping him. And then he told me: this is where I belong. I am sorry, Father. With conviction of a devotee he used to have for me. But not anymore, Nicholas. Not for me,” melancholy in his voice mixes with pride.

Nick still shimmers. “But you knew this is a trap. You knew they want to steal him from you. From _us_. And you just let them?”

“Contrary to popular belief of a salty market competition I am not a tyrant to hold you hostage to my service. And you have always longed after humanity. With all its perfections and imperfections. You have always been envious of their free will. And this is what led you here, Nicholas. Both of you. Your anger. And his love. Your selfishness and his altruism. But your choices. Your free will.”

The silence is almost physical as fire on Nicholas’ skin slowly dies down, along with his anger, making room for shame, making room for the truth. Making room for guilt. And realisation.

“So what do you want to do, son?” the voice sounds gentle and trusting and loving. He keeps on losing his children to allures of humanity he so beloved and so did his creation. But isn’t this what you do. You let go of things you love? “What is your choice?”

“Do I get to have one? Haven’t I run out of choices already?” Nick prompts. Small and insecure. Desperate, too.

“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. Use your freedom to serve one another humbly in love,” the Boss replies with the words he used to sent upon the Earth in the form of spectacular fireworks called Holy Spirit that were though grossly misinterpreted over the ages resulting in a very wrapped version of his teachings that called itself Catholicism.

“Then I choose to live. And I choose to die. And I choose to love, Father,” Nick calls him for the very first time. In gratitude, in humility and in valediction. Although he hopes that maybe, eventually, inevitably, he will be watched over anyway.

“Have a long and fulfilling life, then, Nicholas,” the Boss names him again (no longer celestial being , no longer damned soul, just a boy with clean slate to embark on a journey that is life). He gets closer and touches his cheek with affection and reverence and Nick knows no more.

*

“Earth to Nick!” one of the boys from their orphanage playing the charity basketball match waves his hand in front of Nick’s face to draw his attention back from whatever plane of distractions he’s been lost in. He’s on a coach’s bench, cheering for the little ones to win this thing, talking strategy all the time and handling food and drinks provisions. It’s their monthly tradition. Playing against different teams from various places: schools, other orphanages, homeless shelters. Nick gets the whole community going, letting children know something more outside the bleak reality of them being parentless. Letting them see there’s hope and tomorrow and prospects ahead. He doesn’t remember being anywhere else and doing anything else, but this. He’s ended up being big brother to like 30 kids and it feels like this has always been his life.

The glimmer of the afternoon sun reflecting off the water from nearby docks keeps him transfixed for a moment there. Like he remembers something. A familiar glow. A beloved light. Setting inside him with comfort and known. Making him ache.

It’s this feeling when you have a name on the tip of your tongue, or you know a face but can’t put a name to it or you’re sure you were supposed to do something but can’t for the love of God remember what.

There’s something missing. There’s something for him to know. To recognize.

“Sorry, little man. Keep doing, what you’re doing. Keep kicking their assess and we’re having that pizza, sitting comfortably on another win,” Nick shares a secret handshake with the captain of their team, a 10-yeard old Jeremy, whose mom died of cancer this year and when he ended up under their wing he exclaimed that he knows Nick and that Nick is his favourite superhero and he wants to live with him, but hey, that was pretty routine-like reaction, because all the kids in the neighbourhood claimed this, anyway. What wasn’t such a routine-like reaction was Jeremy often repeating that Nick glows and does superspeed and is even more badass than Barry Allen, which everyone put down to these kids idolizing Nick to the point of seeing him on the covers of their favourite comic books. “Honestly, that would be pretty baadaaass, indeed, my friend. But all I can do is make you superspeed pancakes and a bonus is, they’re gonna be super edible, my friend. How about that?” Nick would respond, brushing aside the nagging feeling of failed recognition.

They are playing against the local catholic school for girls and the girls are absolutely amazing. They’re going really tight, head to head, but Nick’s dedication in training his kids, in pouring his passion for not only sport, but being out there, seeing what possibilities life has to offer, what’s behind the many unopened doors and how many choices they can make, regret, fix, win, too, makes his children play with so much heart, it’s difficult to defeat them.

Doesn’t really matter. By the end of the day they will all be winners, eating pizza, exchanging contacts, taking photos and collecting memories.

Sister Margaret is doing an entire cheerleading routine and then she’s also the most vulgar one, throwing constant offenses at no one in particular – probably her idea of a pep talk, Nick reckons. Before the match she casually went up to him, cradled his face in her hands with affection, that led to trailing her hands on his shoulders and arms and a chest, nodding appreciatively and Nick wondered how close to groping this is, hey, she didn’t get to anything below the waist, yet, so he was pretty okay with that and then she said in a most gentle manner. “You’ve such a good aura, son.”

“Okay, if that’s how you want to call it, sister,” he winks to her smacking his shoulder to continue, unphased.

“You must be either one hell of a Taurus or an angel from some side of your family. I’m tellin’ ya.”

Nick chuckles dismissively to that, even if something stirs inside him. The ache of a strange absence that nags him about forgetting something important.

The sun still glimmers on the surface of the water and Nick still soaks up the golden reflexes, the entire time going through a strange sensation of being watched. Not stared at. Not stalked. Guarded, more like it. And it has something to do with the glow coming from the water, he’s no longer sure is only a matter of sun casting sunrays on the surface there. Like a lighthouse calling him home.

They do win. As predicted. And they all end up in a pizza place near the harbor, with the longest list of toppings you can choose from, which actually you don’t, you just take all of them.

They are in the middle of singing their morale song with sister Margaret leading the chorus to Akon: I just got saved ( _Everybody sing) And it feels so good (We all got saved) (Felt so good) I went and let Him put His Spirit inside of me (I want to tell the world) I just got saved and I'll never go back (No, no, no) to the not-being saved ways of the past_ when the glimmer of sun getting ready to set distracts him again and he feels the call of the water, and his body is pulled and moves on its own.

“I’m not letting you off the hook with that California Christians duet you promised me, son!” he hears sister Margaret holler after him to which he shows her thumbs up, absolutely out of fucks to give at this point, considering there are already several videos of him singing terrible pop parodies of Christian songs on the Internet.

The glow by the water does come from the sun setting in pastel colours on the sky. But it does have another source, too. There’s a guy by the docks, wearing jeans and a plaid (not that Nick notices, hey, he may be trailing the nice shapes with his eyes for a minute or 10, but this is just what people casually do, acknowledging appearance, yes? Just chill out) working with ropes by the boat, his sleeves rolled up, showing tan and strong arms and Nick does notice them, too and the ache from before inside him now tugs at him almost ferociously.

His throat is dry and his heart hammers inside his chest. He’s so physical he thinks his entire life he forgot he has a body that now suddenly yearns. His voice sounds terrible, weak, and squeaky, when he speaks.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” Jesus Christ. How lame can you get?

The guy looks up from his ropes, bent and preoccupied and Nick tries not to continue his venture with eyes to the thickness of his thighs and the broadness of his chest, with plaid unbuttoned strategically on the collarbone areas. Jesus Christ. It’s easy, though, when he sees the guy’s eyes. They become the very center of attention. Soft, teasing, smiling brown. No. Not brown. It’s like the afternoon summer sun escaped to his pupils to brighten them from within with all palette of amber and gold. Yes. That would be it in a nutshell.

“Is that a line?” the guy chuckles openly.

“Yeah. I guess it kinda came out as a super cheesy one. Hey, my first instinct was to ask you, are you glowing, so I guess I could be more cringe?” Nick gets closer and the guy straightens up and the bubbly feeling of needy warmth inside Nick bursts now with heat.

God. He forgot he has a body. But it’s more than that. It’s about filling up that absence inside him with presence. It’s about being complete. And he feels like he can. Like he almost is. Here and now. With him.

“I don’t know, _am I_ glowing?” the guy raises an eyebrow and a corner of his lips follows and Nick thinks he has never seen anyone cuter and more beautiful and, frankly, insert an entire list of clichés here. He is basically cooked.

Nick is nodding. Almost feverishly. Trying not to touch. His entire body yearns to. And then he needs to add to make himself no longer a little bit but fully compromised. “The sunset pales in comparison.”

“Uhm , so you’re a poet now, estrella?” the guy smiles playfully and Nick feels like he’s been punched in the chest.

“How did you call me?” he gasps, because it hurts, but it hurts so good, like he’s alive, insatiable for the feeling.

“It’s nothing. I’m .. it’s nothing,” he starts to get back to his ropes and his fish nets but Nick doesn’t let him. He’s touching his forearm to pause him and make him look. The skin under his fingers feels electric and Nick doesn’t let go, can’t let go, the charge between them making his hair stand on ends, his heart beat wildly and his entire body pull closer and closer.

You know, like in all the writing clichés, because we’re back to that.

“Your boat is called like that, too,” it is. The boat the guy’s been working on, has the name written in golden letters on its side.

“Nice tattoo,” now the touch is reciprocated with Nick still holding onto the guy’s wrist, almost holding his hand, wanting to. The guy’s fingers trail his forearm, a butterfly touch full of recognition, of the feathers on the wing on his skin scattered in the wind in search for belonging, maybe.

“I used to think it’s about looking for a home. Looking for a familiar place. But I don’t think it is about that anymore,” it’s impossible to let go of that skin, so his fingers move to the warm palm, in between the fingers and back to the wrist. And he flutters inside as the recognition settles more and more. Still unnamed but already felt. “What is estrella?”

“It means _star_ in Spanish,” and the guy’s hand travels upwards, to Nick’s shoulder and back to his bare arm. Like the touch of feathers scattering on the wind.

“Why _estrella_?” Nick pesters, like he wants to hear the recognition from the other’s lips.

“To always guide me back home from the sea,” Nick holds his hand by this point and the guy has his palm on Nick’s cheek adoringly.

Bodies remember before hearts do.

“Are you still lost on the sea, matahari?” until the heart do too and Nick feels like overflowing with how full he is with recognition now.

“No. I am not. And are you still up for that cruise you used to pester me about?”

“What trip?” Nick smirks, flirtatious. “I think you need to refresh my memory?”

“I do?” Nick looks at Raphael’s lips now mirroring his teasing smile. Their hands move to bring aching bodies closer. As close as possible.

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“And how should I do that?”

“Kiss me,” Nick’s hand is already at the back of Raphael’s head, pulling him closer, desperate, needy, wanting. They wasted so much time.

And Raphael complies. Like he always did with everything Nicholas needed. The kiss is a promise of so much more, lips recalling how to move together, bodies swaying, leaning in yearning, hands clutching to never let go. Nick purrs to Raphael’s glistening mouth, eyes closed, savouring the sensations, an afterthought echoing their _before_.

“Angels don’t kiss like that.”

“Oh yes they fucking do,” Raphael nuzzles his nose in response, recalling the before bit by bit.

“You’ve watched it without me?” Nick pouts, still holding onto Raphael, face in the crook of his neck, as they stand like that, wrapped around each other, almost as if they still have wings.

“No, estrella. I was waiting for you,” Raphael kisses the top of Nick’s head, keeping him close to his chest.

“We have so much to catch up on. That cruise, though, uhm. I have a bunch of kiddos from an orphanage to care for so it’s gonna be pretty busy,” Nick pulls back to peer into Raphael’s eyes, just for the view but also to explain himself.

“Well, I have a fishing and sailing school to lead so we’re full anyway, Nicholas.”

“Hmm, sounds like a plan,” Nick smiles.

“Sounds like a full good life even,” Raphael nudges him playfully.

“It does,” Nick is nodding eagerly, his mouth going back to this skin he adores so much, curious and hungry, leaving butterfly kisses on Raphael’s cheeks and his neck and his ear.

“Come, let’s get you your favourite topping, estrella,” Raphael’s voice break under Nick’s thorough ministrations on his earlobe.

“But I already have my favourite topping here,” he breathes it out to Raphael’s ear, in a low, hoarse voice. Because we’re still being cliché.

“How do you know? You haven’t tried it, yet?” Raphael’s fingers scratch the top of Nick’s head, like he already knows which buttons to push to make him melt in his hands.

“You’re killing me,” Nick whines, arching, to the touch and to the words full of promise.

“No. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want any more killing, for sure. But we don’t want catching up on things to happen in the middle of the docks either, do we? The Internet is still recovering after your Christian pop songs with sister Margaret,” Raphael tries to entangle himself from Nicholas’ octopus grip and move them in the direction of the pizza place.

Nick groans, frustrated and dissatisfied, but starts dragging their feet there. “Well, she’s in there and she’s so tricking you into one of the duets and you’re so ending up on people’s feeds as the Internet meme, bro.”

“I am willing to make _this_ sacrifice,” Raphael says with an implication and yes, in comparison to what they’ve been through to get here, it’s a really small price to pay.

@

“So, it was all about getting them to bone, old man?” Roger snorts watching Raphael and Nicholas disappear into the pizza place, very handsy with each other, on big flat screen of the Big Boss’ office. He occasionally visits this place to refuel his Phoenix fire with the most efficient solar panels there are in the world.

The Boss switches the screen off, his face eternally kind and approving. He then reaches for the cane by his desk to lift himself up and trod to Roger tempering with his own fire’s levels. 

“The Almighty works in mysterious ways,” he says and heads for the door to leave Roger shrugging in nonchalance and already pulling out his phone.

“Yeah, I’m done. Can you pick me up?” he says to the speaker in German, waiting for the reply. “Yeah, I know you’re not a private taxi service, Dominic, but I want to be eco friendly and your unicorn-shaped hydrojet really fits my aesthetics.” Silence. “Yeah, well, Phoenixes might fly, but I don’t. I spectacularly burst into flames, thank you very much. That’s enough of a hustle as it is. So are you coming or not.” The reply comes and he hangs up, concluding to no one in particular.

“I really should fucking retire.”


End file.
